Photo Editor

📖 Tool Introduction

A layer-based image editor that runs in the browser, laid out the way desktop photo software is: a tool column on the left, a layers panel on the right, and the canvas in the middle. Open an image and you can draw, select and add text right away, with undo and redo backed by a history panel.

The tool rack holds twenty-odd tools: rectangular and elliptical selections, lasso, magic wand, brush, pencil, eraser, gradient, paint bucket, clone stamp, patch, blur, sharpen, dodge, burn, sponge, text, shape, eyedropper, crop, zoom and hand. Layers can be created, duplicated, deleted, moved up and down and merged down, with sixteen blend modes and opacity control.

Editing happens entirely on a local canvas, so images are never uploaded and you can keep working offline. Export saves the composited result as an image file to download.

The value of layers is that mistakes stop being fatal. If you want a halo of light around a subject, paint it on a new layer rather than on the background, and if it looks wrong you delete that one layer with the image underneath untouched. Blend modes combined with opacity produce overlay, soft light and screen effects that look far better for posters and social graphics than flat painting.

The selection tools repay the effort of learning them. Rectangular and elliptical selections suit regular areas, the lasso handles irregular outlines, and the magic wand selects a large region of similar colour in one click, such as grabbing a plain background to replace it wholesale. Once a selection exists, brushes, fills and filters only act inside it, so nothing bleeds past the edge.

A handful of shortcuts are worth memorising from the tool rack: V for move, M for the rectangular selection, L for the lasso, W for the magic wand, B for the brush, E for the eraser, T for text, C for crop and Z for zoom, with the space bar temporarily switching to the hand tool. Once they are familiar you end up with the keyboard on the left and the mouse on the right, at much the same rhythm as desktop software.

✨ Key Features

• Over twenty tools covering selections, lasso, magic wand, brush, clone stamp, patch, text, shapes and more
• A full layer system supporting create, duplicate, delete, reorder and merge down
• Sixteen layer blend modes plus opacity control for stacking rich effects
• A history panel with undo and redo, so misfires can be stepped back one at a time
• Swappable foreground and background colours, with an eyedropper for sampling straight off the canvas
• A filter menu of common image effects, plus zoom and hand tools for working on detail

🚀 How to Use

1. Use the file menu to open an image, or drag one straight onto the canvas
2. Pick a tool from the left column, then set colour, opacity and blend mode at the top
3. Work on the canvas with the brush, stamp or patch tools, using selections to limit where changes land
4. For layered work, create or duplicate layers in the panel on the right
5. When finished press export to save, or undo to roll back a mistake

⚠️ Things to Note

• Everything is edited locally: Editing happens on a browser canvas, images are never uploaded and offline work is fine, but refreshing the page discards unsaved progress
• Large images and many layers cost memory: A high resolution image under several layers uses a lot of memory and can feel sluggish, so consider shrinking the canvas first
• History has a limit: Undo depth is bounded by available memory, so a very long edit chain may not roll all the way back to the start
• Some effects depend on the browser: Blend modes and filters are rendered by the browser canvas, so minor differences between browsers are possible
• Export flattens the result: Export saves the composited image with all layers merged and does not preserve layer information