Free Photo Shop Editor

Introduction to Tools

Photopea located at www.photopea.com is an online feature rich free photo shop alternative software for enhancing, manipulating and editing images.

The Photopea software is perfect for beginner, intermediate and advanced users alike. Photopea's user-friendly interface makes it easy for anyone to start using Photopea immediately. This introductory tutorial will help teach how to use photopea.

Let's get started with the tools available to us in Photopea. A major set of tools included are the various selection tools. The selection tools include the Magic Wand, Rectangle and Ellipse selections and Lasso tools which allow users to make selections around specific areas of their images for modification or manipulation purposes. For example, the Magic Wand tool can be utilized to select a specific color in a digital image. After selecting, we can now change those selections to another color.

Adjustment tools in Photopea such as Brightness and Contrast, Hue and Saturation, or Curves allow users to adjust different aspects of an image bringing overexposed or dark images back to life. These tools can be used to create surreal designs.

The tools provided in Photopea can be used to create the most surreal designs or simply to remove blemishes, dust spots, or repair damage to the image. The Clone Stamp tool, when used properly, can clone specific areas of an image to cover blemishes or any other undesirable elements. This is a favorite tool amongst the pros.

For a free photoshop alternative software, Photopea looks and acts just like an older version of Photoshop. It supplies a plethora of remarkably similar tools for editing, enhancing and retouching images. Without these tools, we would have a more challenging time updating our images and producing professional results.

The Toolbar

The toolbar in Photopea, the free Photoshop alternative software, is where a good portion of your time will be spent when first learning the Photopea software. Learning about the toolbar tools is a necessity for anyone that wants to seriously get into photo editing. While the toolbar is located to the left of the screen, the options for each tool are shown at the top of the screen.

The toolbar in the free photoshop alternative software, Photopea, includes a lot of tools for editing digital images; a few for which we have already mentioned. Most options on the toolbar have a gray arrow to the lower right indicating there are other tools located there from which to choose. We can access these other options by clicking on the tool and holding down the left mouse button. There are shortcut keys that can be used but we will not discuss the options as that topic is outside the scope of this tutorial.

The move tool is shown at the top of the toolbar and has other tools associated with it. To access the other tools, when we click the move tool, hold down the left mouse button. We now see the option for the Artboard tool. When we left click the Artboard tool, we can see the options at the top of Photopea have changed to work with the selected tool.

Beginner Tools

The Move Tool

The move tool allows for moving different layers or elements around within the canvas in Photopea. This will be one of the most used tools within the toolbar. When we view digital images, we see a composition made up of layers, objects and elements. The move tool allows us, as professionals, to align one layer, object or element up with another helping to provide a better overall composition.

When the move tool is selected, layers can be moved with either the mouse by holding the left click down or the keyboard by using the arrow keys to move 1 pixel at a time or holding the shift key to move 10 pixels at a time.

The Select Tools

The select tools in Photopea are used to “select” areas within the composition or the current selected layer. There are 3 tools on the toolbar that hold various selection tools. Each tool has their own specific function within the Photopea software and allows for options at the top of Photopea such as allowing for selection or deselection. While we will explain the tools and their use, discussing the details of each option, such as refine edge, is beyond the scope of this beginner tutorial. The 8 current selection tools offered by Photopea, the free photoshop alternative software, are:

1. Rectangle Selection Tool

   The rectangle select tool does exactly what it sounds like as it creates a varied size rectangle. This tool can be used to initially select an object within its own separate layer and then use the move tool for a more precise selection around that entire object.

2. Ellipse Selection Tool

   Ellipse is a fancy word for oval. The ellipse selection tool is very similar to the rectangle selection tool, the difference being that it makes circle and oval shapes instead of rectangles.

3. Lasso Selection Tool

   The lasso selection tool is a free for all tool in that it allows us to openly draw any shape to select or deselect all or just a portion of an object within a layer. We can use this tool to obtain a more precise selectable area around an object within the current layer. This will allow us to cut that object out of that layer and paste it to its own layer. While this tool is a necessity to learn when digitally modifying images, this will teach you to be extremely good with your mouse, trackball and other devices as well.

4. Polygonal Lasso Selection Tool

   The polygonal selection tool allows us to create attached straight lines to select objects. When selecting areas in a composition using a mouse, trackball or other non-precise device, having the ability to create straight lines to select an object helps a lot.

5. Magnetic Lasso Selection Tool

   The invention of the magnetic lasso tool was amazing. This tool attempts to automatically keep your selection around the object itself, which is extremely useful when using a non-precise moving device such as a mouse or trackball. The magnetic lasso tool has issues with selection wandering when deciphering between closely related colors such as brown and black, especially if the image is low quality. It can select undesired areas while moving around the object within a layer. If this happens, zoom in on the area, choose the regular lasso tool and use the subtract option to deselect the undesired selected area. To help alleviate the selection wandering issues within the magnetic selection tool, we can left click as we are moving to set a point in place.

6. Magic Wand Selection Tool

   The magic wand takes the magnetic lasso tool to the next level. This tool attempts to decipher the lines between objects within a layer. When using the magic wand, the feather option becomes extremely important. The feather option tells the tool how many pixels to deviate from the pixel color chosen and the higher that number, the more pixels will be chosen at once. The magic wand selection tool suffers from the same issues as the magnetic lasso tool when deciphering the differences between pixels within an image. Unlike the magnetic lasso tool, we cannot click to create set points but we can drag our cursor over an object within a layer to select just that object and then refine the selection with other tools afterwards.

7. Quick Selection Tool

   The quick selection tool wants to bring the magic tool up a notch. This tool attempts to perform the same functions as the magic wand tool but quicker. While we can still drag the cursor over the desired object to be selected, we can also just click on an area and the tool will try to automatically select the object. There is no feather option for this tool and it tends to select undesired areas automatically so use this with caution.

8. Object Selection Tool

   The latest addition to the selection tools is the object selection tool. This object has a feather option that should be used and it will attempt to select an entire object within a single layer. The object selection tool is severely faster than outlining the object manually with the lasso tool. When using this object selection tool, as with any of the other automatic selection tools, it may select undesired areas and will need to be corrected with the subject or add option in the normal lasso tool after the initial selection has been accomplished.

The Crop Tool

Simply put, digitally cropping an image means cutting portions of the image away from the original image by removing portions of the canvas. This in turn resizes the image to a new canvas size. There are more advanced definitions that use fancy terms like aspect ratios, dimensions, overcrop but it all comes back to we are resizing the canvas of the digital image and deleting unwanted portions of the original image.

When hearing people discuss cropping an image, the crop tool is what they use to accomplish that task.

When wanting to learn how to use Photopea, the free photoshop alternative software, the standard Crop tool is a necessity, and it is very simple. Select the crop tool and click and drag around the area for which is desired and the rest of the image will be greyed out. Click the checkmark at the top and watch the rest of the image disappear.

The standard cropping tool is the most common cropping tool for use but we have another called perspective crop. While perspective crop is not considered a beginner tool, we will briefly discuss it since it is directly related to the cropping tools.

Perspective cropping allows for adjusting the corners offering a more versatile crop, such as diagonal lines instead of rectangle. Use caution when using this because perspective cropping can and will likely distort the image after cropping is completed. The perspective crop tool is currently only compatible with BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPG, PNG, PSD, PXD, TIFF and WEBP files.

The Brush Tool

The brush tool is another tool that performs the same function for which it is named. This tool is extremely versatile and wants to act like a brush. Photopea can import various brushes for different effects. The brush tool has different options to simulate a real brush. We can control size, color, shape, opacity, pressure, precision, flow and smoothness of the brush. The brush tool is used a lot when building compositions from scratch or adding new objects to an already existing composition. While the other two tools associated with the brush tool icon placement are outside the scope of this tutorial, we will mention the pencil and the color replacement tool are both available.

The Eraser Tools

There are three eraser tools in Photopea each with its own distinctive functionality. Learning to use each of these eraser tools available will save tremendous amounts of time when editing digital images. At first glance, the tools will appear very similar but there are some very technical differences between them when it comes to the features.

1. Standard Eraser

   This tool acts more like a brush than an eraser. The features above allow for brush and pencil options, and it will erase the content in accordance with the same rules as those tools.

2. Background Eraser

   This tool has various mode options including:

   1. Continuous is best used for erasing multiple colors at one time while holding the left mouse button down and dragging the cursor across the portion of the digital image desired to be removed.
   2. Once is great for larger images as it will remove all the pixels of that color. Use this option with caution as it tends to create jagged images and leave open spots within the image.

   The Background option allows for erasing colors that are similar to that currently selected on the background color picker, discussed later in this tutorial. The tolerance option will allow for erasing only those colors similar to that within that many pixels. The left click button must be held down and the cursor must be dragged across the colors desired to be removed.

   3. Magic Eraser:
      The magic eraser tool is a single click removal. We can keep the selection contiguous, which means only near the same area for which we are clicking, or uncheck that option and apply it to the entire layer. This tool can also be used in combination with a selected area to apply it to only that area for which we have selected.

The Paint Bucket Tool

Yet another tool that is named accurately and has the function one would expect from the name. The paint bucket tool aims to act like a paint bucket that affects an area within the layer or selection for which it is being applied. The tolerance setting allows for the number of pixels, in color, allowed to be affected from the original pixel color that was clicked. The opacity setting will allow us to change how opaque or see-through the color will be after we click on an area within the image.

Selecting an area and working in that selected area will prevent this from affecting other undesired areas within the image.

The Gradient Tool

A gradient is a fancy term for multiple colors within one area. The transition of those colors can fade into one another by gradually changing into that next color or be abrupt.

The gradient tool allows for easily creating these color transitions and deciding whether we want them to be smooth or abrupt changes. It is an excellent tool for adding color effects to a composition such as creating a sky at sunset or changing the color of the water in an image. There are several uses for gradients within images and the gradient tool makes it easier to create those gradients than trying to create them manually.

The Zoom Tool

As another properly named tool, the zoom tool simply allows you to easily zoom in and out of an image to get a better view on the pixels contained within that image. That statement does imply that we are viewing an image format that uses pixels. When viewing the portion of an image up close, we can more precisely select areas for which are desired to be modified.

Photopea, the free photoshop alternative software, has quite a few methods for zooming in and out of an image, some of them more advanced than others.

1. Keyboard Shortcuts

   This is the easiest method to zoom in and out of the image.

   1. Hold down the CTRL (or CMD for Mac) and use the + or – keys on the keyboard to increase or decrease the viewability of the image.
   2. Hold down the CTRL (or CMD for Mac) and use the + or – keys on the keyboard to increase or decrease the viewability of the image.
   3. Hold down the CTRL key and press the 1 key to go to view 100% of the image size.
2. Zoom Tool Icon

   When using the tool directly, there are options for plus and minus at the top of Photopea. Additionally, the right click context menu now has the option to zoom in or out of the image, fit to area or go to 100% of the image size. To use the right click context menu, simply right click on the image.

3. Keyboard and Middle Mouse Button

   This is the most advanced method of zooming in and out and most definitely is not the easiest but there are those that love their middle mouse buttons. Hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard and now push the middle mouse button in and hold it. This will change the cursor to a zoom magnifying glass with a plus sign. At this point, the CTRL key can be let go. While holding the middle mouse button, move your cursor left or right to zoom out or into the image.

Learning how to zoom will help more precisely modify images and save a tremendous amount of time.

The Color Picker Tools

While there are several locations for color picker tools, we are discussing the ones located on the toolbar. We see two color picker tools on the toolbar in Photopea, the free photoshop alternative software being discussed in this beginner tutorial on how to use Photopea. These color picker tools are diagonal from one another, have an arrow to the lower left corner and black and white squares to the upper right of them. All these options have their own functions as discussed below.

There are two main color options in Photopea: Foreground and background.

1. Foreground Color

   This is the main color that will be chosen whenever the brush, paint bucket, pencil or any direct color display tools are used other than the gradient tool which uses both the foreground and background colors together.

2. Background Color

   While we are sure there must be a way to paint with the background color on the canvas without swapping the foreground and background colors, the only method we could figure out is by using the swap option to the lower left of the color pickers to swap the background and foreground colors and then paint with that color normally. This acts more like a color backup than a background color. Perhaps there is a method, but we could not figure it out while researching this software.

   The only thing we could find for use for the background color within Photopea, the free photoshop alternative software, was when using the gradient tool. When using the gradient tool, by default, both the foreground and background colors are used.