This free Photoshop alternative runs right in your browser

It can be tough to justify shelling out for Photoshop if you only need to edit images every now and then. As an alternative, I recommend checking out Photopea. It’s a free image editor that runs right in your browser.

You can use it for quick jobs like cropping, resizing, or touching up a photo, but Photopea goes well beyond the basics. It supports layers, masks, filters, smart objects, vector graphics, and AI tools for things like removing backgrounds or replacing parts of an image—and it does  a pretty good job of it too. It can also open and save PSD files, which makes it especially useful if someone sends you a Photoshop file and you don’t actually have Photoshop.

The layout follows a familiar pattern, too. You’ve got your tools on the left, layers on the right, and menus across the top. If you’ve ever spent any time in Photoshop, you’ll be able to find your way around pretty quickly.

Photopea is entirely free and you don’t have to install anything or make an account. Since it’s  browser-based, you can simply open the Photopea site and start editing. Your files are also processed locally on your device instead of being uploaded to Photopea’s servers.

There are a few catches. The free version has ads, and large or complicated projects can bog things down a bit. But for quick edits, memes, graphics, or the odd PSD file, Photopea is a surprisingly capable tool that I think is worth keeping bookmarked.

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