Do you take feature requests?

(Triple-click to select a full line or sentence of text would be nice.)

That sounds like a great feature! I just implemented it.

Have we given his site the reddit hug of death?

Seems like you did! Wow, it never happened in five years ... :D

There was a problem with statistics, which grew unexpectedly. Everything works well now :)

This is fantastic! Thank you! Do you have a place to donate? I prefer to use Adblock, but you deserve my money

Thanks! I offer "Premium accounts". Press the Account button at the top, and order a Premium :) Unlike AdBlock, Premium will spread the workspace into the area, where the ad used to be :)

You've created really excellent product, are you even human? ;D How did you learn javascript and are you satisfied with the code, or do you feel the urges to refactor?

Thanks! I learned programming (and related skills) at the college, it took me several years. I learned javascript using some online tutorials in a week (and got comfortable with while using it).

The programming language is the least important thing for me in programming :D But the performance is important to me (I would not use JS, if there was no way to make it fast).

Some parts of Photopea are quite complex and ugly (functions with hundreds of lines of code), but I could not simplify them even after several days. I am scared of the day when I will have to look into them.

Curious, are you taking advantage of GPU processing/libraries?

Photopea uses the GPU through a WebGL interface. Otherwise, it would be impossible to render 10 MPx document with lots of layers at 60 fps (e.g. when moving a layer, we need to redraw it smoothly).

What are the advantages to using your program over other alternatives such as Gimp?

Photopea can load popular formats, such as PSD, Sketch, PDF, SVG ... which Gimp can not load. Photopea can load files from Gimp, too.

In terms of features, Photopea offers the Spot Healing brush, Quck Selection, Refine Edge tool, Liquify filter ... which are not present in Gimp (actually, I think they are not present in any free program except of Photopea).

Does Photopea support loading text layers as text from a pad instead of rasterized?

Yes, Photopea can edit Text layers in PSD, and it can store the new text back into a PSD file (you can even Warp text!). I believe that Photopea and Photoshop are the only programs, that can do that.

So, is that "Photo-pea" or "Photo-pee-ah"?

(The idea of naming it after a small green vegetable amuses me)

I pronounce it "Photo-pee". Sadly, I am not amused anymore, after so many years of saying it :D

Hey no questions, I just wanted to thank you for making this available! I've often been working on a computer that isn't my own, but required Photoshop, and this has always worked in a pinch. Keep it up. Cheers!

Thanks! Now, if people search the internet for "edit PSD online" or similar phrases, Photopea should be the first result :)

PLEASE don't sell out to Adobe.

Many people who are interested in this product can't afford their stupid subscription based software so you making this really helps us out!

Concerning this program are you thinking of making an Illustrator or InDesign equivalent? What about After Effects?

I don't think Adobe would be interested in my work, since they already have everything I have (or even a better version of it).

I never used Illustrator or After Effects, but many users have asked me to make a video editor.

Do you use photoshop still?

Also, what do you do for other income?

I am not a designer, and I use Photopea for all my "designing" needs today. After finishing college, Photopea is my only source of income.

That’s awesome that you can live off an already made product. I assume you have to update and fix bugs and stuff as more OS’s come out?

It’s client side in the browser so its browser dependent not REALLY OS dependent (I suppose the case for browser X on OS Y may be ahead of Browser A on OS B).

Exactly, thanks to the web, I don't have to deal with specific operating systems too much. But there are many minor problems, e.g. if you do Ctrl+Click on Mac OS, it works as a right-click. So recently, I discovered, that the feature, which is initiated with Ctrl+Click, does not work on Macs at all (as Photopea is told by the browser and OS, that a right-click was made).

Same goes for Spacebar+Click on Chrome OS.

Have you received any backlash from photoshop?

I was contacted by one of developers of Adobe XD, to coordinate me about the development of the XD format (which is very new and still in development, but I implemented it into Photopea).

I am trying to compete with all photo editors, but Adobe Photoshop is the most popular one today (that is why I worked so hard on supporting PSD files).

Can I get it on my phone?

I am trying to make Photopea work well on any kind of device. You can run it in mobile browsers (actually, 15% of PP users use it on phones), but it is quite hard to control on a small screen.

Are you willing to share how much income you make from 1.5 million visitors in a month? Are you part of an ad network?

I am using Google AdSense. It lets me make about 2 USD per 1000 views (so I make about 2000 - 3000 USD a month from ads, depending on how many people use AdBlock). Here is where are our users from :) https://twitter.com/photopeacom/status/1058678673866481665

Wow that's great. Congratulations. I imagine lots of the income is spent on your hosting costs. Are you on AWS?

Actually, I pay about 20 USD a year for hosting. Photopea runs completely at client-side, there is no server-side computation. Once Photopea.com is loaded, there is no communication with the server after that (you can disconnect from the internet and use it offline).

Were you approached by any company that wanted to buy photopea.

If yes do you think it was in order to make it disappear while it's still cheap enough to buy out?

I was approached several times by people wanting to buy Photopea. They had serious plans with it, plans to make it even better.

Why did you decide against selling?

I thought, that I can get even bigger offers in the future. Also, I don't need so much money at the moment (I am not a fan of buying expensive stuff just for fun, and I don't know what to invest the money into).

What's next for you? Not the software specifically, but what are you hoping happens in your future?

I don't know. I am focusing on short-term goals right now. Of course, with more money, I would have more possibilities. I think the big milestone of my professional life will be, when I learn to dedicate work to others :D Because I am still a bit scared of it, and rather do everything myself.

How did you make your website to get known? How you did the marketing for ir to get the ball rolling?

Thanks.

It was not in one day, or week, or month. It took many years to get the ball rolling (and we are still accelerating). Users spreaded it among each other. I was posting about it on my blog, Reddit, Hacker News, etc. I also have fan pages on Facebook and Twitter.

In short, I had 3000 visitors a month in March 2014. Then, it doubled every six months.

How awesome! I'm integrating more technology into my classroom to help my students toward success once they move on to high school and beyond. Photoshop is a skill that I've wanted to share with them but it's been so cost prohibitive that it's never been an option, so this is a fantastic alternative.

Can you tell me what the benefits of a premium account would be and if there's a way to purchase one at a group rate?

The Premium account only hides adds, nothing more. Feel free to use a regular web version :)

What's for dinner?

I had some chicken :)

Do you plan to opensource it one day?

I already open-sourced about 30% of Photopea as libraries, that can be used for various purposes: https://github.com/photopea?tab=repositories

But I am not so sure about releasing the whole thing :/

What are the supported file types?

I see that you talk about working to make sure .psd files are compatible, but how about .raw or other more ridiculous ones?

I ask because Lightroom failed to load .cdr2 files (from a camera).

Side note: it's amazing that it's all done in browser.

The supported file types are mentioned here: https://github.com/photopea/photopea

There are many formats for raw photos. There is an open and free DNG format (supported by Photopea), but many companies still use their proprietary formats (CR2, NEF, etc). I hope they will all move to DNG soon.

How does this compare to GIMP? Any thoughts on contributing to that project as well?

I wrote about the comparison to GIMP above. Initially, I wanted to make an editor based on the PSD format, which Gimp is not, so making it from a ground-up was the only way to go.

I just used this for the first time a few days ago, and I think it's amazing. Have you ever got into any sort of legal trouble from Adobe because of how similar the programs are?

I was not contacted by Adobe. I think all programs in this category (Photoshop, Pixelmator, Affinity, Pixlr) look very similar to each other.

Can someone who knows nothing about Photoshop use this? Is there a tutorial? I like the idea!

Of course you can! I wrote a manual at Photopea.com/learn . But it is an advanced program. Don't expect to learn everything in one day.

Have you thought of supporting stereoscopic photographs?

I don't know much about photo editing, that is specific only to stereo pictures. Is there any specific problem, that you need to solve?

Since there are 2 images, what is done to one has to be done to the other, EXCEPT with the correct amount of disparity, which is what creates the depth. Current best program is http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/ which lets you do simple text and cloning.

I see, that people store these photos as one JPG with both parts, one next to another. You can apply basic operations (changing Brightness, Saturation, sharpening) as if it was one photo.

Adding a "stereo layer" on top (and setting its "distance") would be a nice feature :) Or converting it to Anaglyph. If you want, you can make a feature request to https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues and write down all non-basic stereo operations, that you wish to have :)

How are you?

I am great! I did not expect so many questions :) How are you?

Where are you from, if not a secret?

I live in Prague, Czech Republic. I was born in western Ukraine. My grandma is from Russia. I studied in Switzerland for half a year :)

Is photopea down? For me it says the site can't be reached. Also are you going to make it so we can use our own fonts?

It is running again. You can load your own fonts using File - Open, see https://www.photopea.com/learn/text-style

What is your favorite thing you have made using your program?

I really don't use my program that much. But when I do, I can find five bugs in ten minutes.

Can you prove you are the creator?

Sure! I think my photo with a link on the paper would not prove a lot ... so I just made this page https://www.photopea.com/reddit.html with a link to this AMA :)

As far as the OSS / Closed question, what do you think of the Blender model? (i.e. cash in and open-source the whole thing at once)

Many years ago, Blender was free but closed-source. They did a crowdfunding campaign and were able to raise enough money to buy the code and release it under BSD GPL license. At the time it was definitely the best free 3D software and today that's probably still true, it's certainly one of the most successful OSS projects in history.

It was successful partly because it was popular with users and artists, partly because it offered a good opportunity for talented developers to contribute and add features. Today some of the features are better than their commercial equivalents, although that's far from true across the entire package.

We have been discussing it at our forum: https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/45

I've not used your product (will check it out) but my main frustration with the free alternatives to Photoshop is that they're too different. The shortcuts and button locations are muscle memory at this point and I'm not willing to learn a new product. Have you made any effort to be as similar as possible to Photoshop? (appreciating that there's a point where you're infringing on IP but I don't think shortcut keys and button locations quite do it)

Since the beginning, I was trying to implement the shortcuts and the layout, that is familiar to Photoshop / Pixlr / Pixelmator users. Try Photopea for a couple of minutes and tell me, how did you feel :)

Have you wrote your own canvas handling code? For example object selection, layering, etc - or used libraries like Fabric.js?

I did not use such libraries, I made my own system. Photopea uses WebGL whenever it is available (but can work without it).

I am using paper.js to compute boolean operations on vector shapes (e.g. the Intersection or Union of two bézier shapes). I wish somebody makes an alternative, so I can get rid of that extra 100 kB of data, that each user has to download.

What was the most frustrating thing that you have came across while working on Photopea?

Being stuck with some problem and not knowing anybody who could help me (as there are not many people in the world who had to deal with a similar problem).

Any chance you're working on a competitor to Lightroom? I'm sick of paying Adobe a subscription fee...

I never used Lightroom. But Photopea can open raw DNG photos.

Have you considered using a service like cloudflare in conjunction with your hosting service, to speed up the service?

I never thought about it. It loads in two seconds where I live. Is it too slow where you live?

Note, that Photopea is about 1.5 MB, which need to be loaded.

How did you start it?

What algorithms or what "stuff" do you use to edit photos?

Did you "mash up" existing code from somewhere and then polish and refactored it to optimize it?

Have you applied any kind of development framework to help you in the development?

This in a extremely interesting ama, thanks!

I started simply by making a little experiment, which got out of hand. I made most of code myself. There are all kinds of algorithms used, it is hard to mention even a specific category of algorithms.

Why I always hear about brilliant programmers from the Czech Republic ?

Me too.

What tips would you give to amateur programmers?

I don't know. I made just one big program in my whole life. I prefer it much more, than working on a completely different task each month.

This is amazing. I can't believe you made this in a web browser, and by yourself!!!! Amazing. Why did you start this project? Did you think you'd get this far when you got started? Do you like painting or photo editing?

Hi, you can find more info here: https://blog.photopea.com/introduction.html :) I used to paint a lot when I was little.

Hug of death so I can't check the site out at the moment.

In a pinch if I need a photo editor I currently use: Pixlr

My question really.. Is: What key elements does your site have that other online image editors don't or lack?

I will have a look at your site once it's back online.

It is back online :) I believe Photopea has more features than Pixlr (hard to mention, there are hundreds of them). It is probably also faster.

Ok question as a small joke lol. But hopefuly you can responding with some laugh haha.

Did you out spywares in your excellent free software so you can spy on us 24/7 ? :P

I am mining bitcoins on your computers, too! :)

Can it only be used through a web browser? I'd like to try an installed local version on my PC

I don't want to provide an offline version, because I am afraid of people not updating it and possibly getting angry over bugs, which are already fixed in the online version. Also, ads would not work offline :(

What made you want to go into programming?

When I was a child, I was good at Math, and I was interested in technology (machines etc.). I think that programming allowed me to combine both worlds together.

I am such a Photoshop noobie

Would this be a good starting point to learn?

Sure, just go to www.Photopea.com/learn !

What's your ideal breakfast?

I eat cereals with milk, since I don't like to cook. I admire people who like to cook :)

What open source library have you used in Photopea that you’ve found most useful, or impressed you the most?

I am using the JPG decompressor, which is a part of the pdf.js library. I also used pako.js a lot (a library for compressing / decompressing data with a DEFLATE algorithm), even though I made my own alternative called UZIP.js

I find Affinity Photo better than photoshop due to the healing tools and so-on just working that bit better. How do you feel your program compares to Affinity?

I never used Affinity, but I am quite sure the PSD support in Photopea is much better than Affinity. The Spot Healing brush in Photopea usually works better than in Photoshop (but don't know about Affinity).

Do you make money by selling data ? Also props to your hard work bro, good for you! Hope you are financially rewarded for your hours.

Thanks! What kind of data do you have in mind? I was thinking about offering some nice Templates or Fonts to users to buy, but I don't know if anybody would be interested.

Do you have any plans to replace "photoshop" as a verb with "photopea"? "I'm gonna photo pee that" doesn't sound as catchy out loud.

I don't think I have any power to coordinate the development of the language :D Let's see what will the users come up with :)

What’s the best kind of roof for my garage?

I have no idea :(

But I always found it weird, that the garage is usually more expensive, than a car. Like, if the box to protect a present was more expensive, than the present itself. So strange.

So why waste all that time and effort and not simply improve Gimp?

It is not that easy. It is a bit like asking "Why build a car, when you can improve a bicycle?" Photopea is not a car yet. But the core of both programs is a lot different. You can not always rebuild one thing into another thing (or at least, it is not always the easiest way to go).

Why didn't you make two free alternatives to Photoshop? Wouldn't that have given 3 million people the tools they need?

I don't know what you mean.