Image and video decision
Photopea Premium
You can build a useful in-browser editor for core editing workflows, but reproducing Photopea's full feature set, PSD fidelity, performance optimizations and breadth of format support is a multi-week effort and likely not worth reimplementing for most users.
Visit website↗Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need — the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship.
Code Photopea Premium publishes itself
Not a way out of the subscription — these are the vendor’s own repositories. Worth a look for how they build, and for anything you would have to integrate with.
What a replacement has to do
- Open local image files in the browser, edit with layers/tools, and export to common formats
What it still won’t have
- Full PSD import/export fidelity claimed by Photopea
- Performance and low-level optimizations for many formats and large files
- Built-in collection of templates and tutorials
- Ongoing product polish, bug fixes and cross-device compatibility
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal browser-based photo editor using React (or Preact) + TypeScript and HTML Canvas, with optional WebAssembly image routines (Rust via wasm-pack) for heavy operations. In-scope: (1) open local image files (PNG, JPG, WEBP) via File API; (2) store document state (layers, layer order, transforms, masks, basic properties) in IndexedDB; (3) implement brush, eraser, selection, move/transform, crop tools; (4) implement layer compositing with opacity and common blend modes; (5) export flattened PNG/JPEG and download; (6) client-side unit and integration tests, error handling, and CI. Out of scope: full PSD import/export parity, extensive format support (RAW, AI, INDD), advanced AI fill/replace, multi-user collaboration, and mobile-native apps. Deliverables: runnable dev server (npm), build script, basic UI, test suite, and README with deployment steps.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 3 cited sources+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score64
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time — so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productPhotopea | Online Photo Editor
- open sourcenhn/tui.image-editor
- open source1j01/jspaint
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
