Photopea

Photopea is a free, browser-based photo and graphics editor created by Ivan Kutskir, a Czech developer based in Prague. Kutskir began developing Photopea as a personal project, driven by the challenge of building a full-featured image editor that runs entirely in the browser. Since its initial release in 2013, the tool has grown into one of the most popular free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop, attracting millions of monthly users worldwide without any venture capital funding.

The editor supports an impressive range of file formats including PSD, AI, Sketch, XD, PDF, SVG, and all common raster formats, making it a true drop-in replacement for desktop editing software. Photopea offers layer-based editing, brushes and filters, vector tools, text editing, RAW file support, and batch processing capabilities. Crucially, all file processing happens locally in the browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly -- no files are uploaded to any server unless the user explicitly chooses to save to cloud storage. This architecture provides inherent privacy protection by design.

As a Czech product operating under EU jurisdiction, Photopea is fully GDPR-compliant. Its local-processing architecture means user data never leaves the browser, offering a level of privacy that cloud-dependent editors cannot match. The tool is free to use with ads, with an optional premium subscription that removes advertisements, making professional-grade image editing accessible to everyone regardless of budget or operating system.