I made a free alternative to Photoshop, that is used by 3 millions of people. Ask me Anything!

What do you think the biggest advantage of Photopea is over Photoshop (other then being free, of course)? What about GIMP?

Unlike Photoshop, Photopea can open almost any structured graphics file (XD, Sketch, SVG, PDF, XCF, Corel) and save them in a PSD format. There is a Vectorize Image (bitmap tracing) feature and several other features, that are not present in Photoshop. Also, Photopea runs on Linux, Chrome OS, Android, iOS and anywhere else, where you have a browser :)

Unlike GIMP, Photopea fully supports the PSD format. So it has features such as layer styles, adjustment layers, smart objects, smart filters, text warping etc.

What inspired you to create this?

P.S. I’ve recommended Photopea to multiple people on Reddit. Keep up the incredible work!

Originally, it was just a little experiment (100 hours of work). I was curious about what can be done in a browser. I kept improving it to a point, when it actually became usable (it took years, see the last AMA). P.S. thanks for your recommendations! :)

a little experiment (100 hours of work)

Dude.

I expect every such experiment not to take more than 1 hour. But sometimes, I start to enjoy seeing it grow. I definitely enjoyed most of my work on Photopea.

I got in touch (videocalls) with Corel, Adobe, Google and many other tech companies (mostly from the Silicon Valley)

Could you say something more about that in general? Im curious.

They were also curous. They asked me various questions, what are the capabilities of Photopea, what plans do I have for the future, etc.

In case of Google, I received a direct contact to a Chrome developer, so I can report my opinions and findings directly to him, and be sure, that they will be noticed :)

I'm sure this plans to remain a web app, but have you thought about porting it to a desktop program? Seems like it would be easier to integrate in to people's workflows, with the ability to open files with photopea, and ability to use offline.

Can you support yourself with the ad revenue?

Do you have other similar projects planned?

Thanks! The .psd file support is amazing. And amazing it is better than the work of all the people at GIMP. You're amazing!

I was always afraid, that it would take me too much time to maintain several native versions. But soon, such capabilities (like opening files in Photopea from a desktop) will be possible through a Web App. You can already press More - Install Photopea, to add an icon to your homescreen.

Yes, I have been able support myself with the ad revenue in the past two years :)

At the moment, I plan to add new features to Photopea. Thanks for your compliments! :)

Is it pronounced Photopea, like Utopia but with Photo? Or like Photo-Pea?

I pronounce it like a vegetable Pea, or like Black-Eyed-Peas :)

How'd you come up with the name?

Apple was already taken

[removed]

**** The person above said, that this is their favourite Reddit reply.

Thanks! When I think a feature is useful, and it would take less than 30 mins, I usually add it immediately :)

To edit images they need to be uploaded. So what about the usage rights of the contents/images?

Photopea runs completely in your device, just like Gimp or Photoshop do. It does not upload any of your files to the internet.

You can load www.Photopea.com, disconnect from the internet and keep using it completely offline. None of your files ever leaves your computer.

Can it work on a chrome book?

I never used Photopea on a Chromebook, but 4 000 people a day do use it on Chromebooks, so I guess it can :)

This is amazing! Used it before but didn't know the story behind it. As a cs/econ major myself how did you learn all the skills you needed to create something like this?

At the beginning, I did not need any advanced knowledge, basic programming skills were enough. Later, I had to learn about advanced algorithms, to add some advanced features. But my CS degree definitely helped me understand all the terminology, so it was not very hard.

I also had to learn about many standards, such as PSD, PDF, PostScript, PNG, TIFF, OpenType ... It has nothing to do with science, you just have to go through hundreds of pages of specifications, to be able to implement that standard. And you return to these specifications from time to time, to fix problems in your implementation :)

What’s bigger in Prague, hockey or basketball?

Everybody watches hockey during a world cup, but it is football for the rest of the year :)

Have you ever been contacted by any big names in the tech world with monetary offers?

I have been offered acquisitions (but not by "big names"), which I refused. It feels like everybody wants to see what will happen next, before they make any offers.

Always amazing all this is possible in a browser. I prefer this over paint.net and gimp and find myself opening Photoshop less and less for my basic graphical needs.

Have you ever considered offering this as an app in say windows store or standalone? Also, I'd love to support your work but with how rarely I need a graphic editor $80 annually for adfree is outside my usage pattern / needs. Have you considered offering any other options.

Thanks again and always amazes me!

I don't want to provide too many options (like pay 1 USD to use Photopea for 5 hours ad-free during a next year). It is ok if you don't pay directly :) You can recommend Photopea to your friends, I appreciate it even more than money :)

Do you plan on making an ad free service for a set amount, or do you always intend on keeping it free and getting your revenue from ads?

You can buy a Premium account (press Account at the top), which is ad-free :) But most importantly, the user interface is "wider", as it stretches to a space where the ad was.

I’m stupid so ignore if this doesn’t make sense but has there been any legal troubles with Adobe (I think? The photoshop company) because of both programs (?) being so similar?

I was never contacted by anybody regarding this matter. There are many more programs in this category, which are all quite similar. But Adobe Photoshop is the most famous one.

How much money do you earn from it?

With ads, you can make between 2 to 6 USD per 1000 visits on your webpage. So with 3 millions of visits, I can make between 6 to 18 000 USD a month, it depends on a month and an ad provider (I have been testing several of them lately).

What's the cost to run something like Photopea?

I pay about 50 USD a year for webhosting, but I have 7 more websites there (not as popular as Photopea). The traffic is quite big (200 GB a day), but my hosting provider seems to be ok with it.

Photopea does not use any SQL databases, PHP or any other server-side programming, as it runs in a browser.

What did you replace with AdSense with? How did it increase your income?

I tried www.SetupAd.com, www.ValueImpression.com and www.PubGalaxy.com , they all work in a similar way. The revenue increased abuout 3x if compared with AdSense. But I think they require you to have large traffic, as they tune ads manually for each client.

What languages is the tool primarily written in? How did you scale the infrastructure to support your user base?

It is written in Javascript and GLSL. As Photopea runs in your browser (there is no upload or download), it does not need any advanced hosting.

How old were you when you created it? And what was your background in?

I was 21. But I did not work on it full-time until 26 :) Here you can find more details: https://blog.photopea.com/introduction.html

Hi,

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you said previously that Photopea runs offline once loaded. How big is the software ? I'm asking because it is definitely faster to open www.photopea.com than to open Photoshop, which do not have to be downloaded !

Right now, Photopea is about 1.4 MB (most of it is zipped javascript).

• 880 kB is the actual program
• 150 kB are localizations to 38 languages, with 650 phrases in every language
• 116 kB is a database of gradients, brushes, patterns and contours
• 84 kB are icons (112 of them, in a 160x160 px resolution)
• 23 kB is a font database (names, categories and URLs for 4700 TTF files)

When you open a font menu, this 1 MB PNG file is downloaded with previews of 4700 fonts :) And of course, if you choose a font, it is loaded on-demand.

I loved your previous AMA, your enthusiasm and hard work really motivates me to keep going. I have Photoshop at work, but at home I use Photopea :)

So my question is: how do you keep yourself motivated to keep working on something when you don't know if it's doable or if it's going to return something to you? Like, during those years it took for you to actually develop Photopea.

Thank you! :)

I believe everything is doable, but it may take a lot of time. And a big part of that time might be learning how to do it.

With Photopea, I simply knew, that if there is a free PSD editor, there will be people using it (as no other such program exists). But I had no idea if I would be able to monetize it, i.e. if I will be paid for my work. But it was just a hobby, so I did not care too much about the future :)

I would like to donate to you when I get my next check. Do you have a donation link?

Hi, you can get a Premium account (press Premium at the top) and you will get Photopea ad-free :)

What do you think about Adobe Lightroom? I like its non destructive editing capabilities on raw files. It could work well with a raw file still on the user hard drive and your service might only store the editing settings.

Being a casual user I have a life subscription of old Lightroom version but , but it won't be a good cheap choice for me to pay a monthly subscription.

I never used Adobe Lightroom. I am not a photographer myself (I take pictures with a phone and never edit them). Photopea is for messing around with a single photo for hours, more than batch-processing hundreds of photos by specific parameters.

Hey, love the program! Are there any plans on allowing users to create selections with the pen tool? Using the pen path to form a selection was probably one of my favorite aspects of Photoshop.

Yes, I do plan to make it work this way :) https://github.com/photopea/photopea/issues/1068

What did you study to create a whole new software?

My Bachelor program was "Programming" and my Masters program was called "Theoretical computer science / Artifficial intelligence" :) You can read my Master thesis here: http://www.ivank.net/blogspot/symmetry_breaking.pdf It has absolutely nothing to do with image editing :D

Do you think you will try to do something like after effects ever?

Give me a week

When you start building an application that needs to scale to this level, do you use open source tools, or do you use paid tools?

Also how do you determine if something you implemented is covered by a patent?

As Photopea runs fully in a browser, the server-side technology is the same as when I had 1000x less users (just a file server for hosting HTML, JS and CSS files).

You can search for patents online. Every invention usually has a name, given by authors, and you can search patents for that name.

How did you manage the translations by the users? Which service did you use?

I made my own format for storing translations in a JSON format. It is described here: https://github.com/photopea/OpenWord . I also made a simple web tool, that loads such file, lets you edit JSON through the UI, and sends a new JSON to the server. It is also open-source in that repository.

Translations of Photopea can be made and edited by anybody here: https://www.photopea.com/translate/ . There are cases of vandalism from time to time, but it is still worth it :)

What language did you build this in and how are you dealing with performance optimization in the browser? Are you using WASM?

Hi, I wrote my code in Javascript and I think that the WASM version of it would not be much faster. JS engines are quite smart, and I believe my JS code is very efficient when running on the CPU.

I do use a WASM version of a HarfBuzz library :) https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/issues/1633 I did spend about 300 hours writing my own OpenType shaping in JS, but then, I threw all that code away (as it looked like I will have to spend 1000 more hours), and asked Harfbuzz developers to make a WASM release for me :)