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PaintLasso vs Photopea

Both PaintLasso and Photopea run entirely in your browser, both are free, and both are great places to start if you don't want to install Photoshop. But they solve different problems. Photopea is the closest free browser tool to Photoshop for photo editing, retouching, and PSD files. PaintLasso is a painting and illustration studio with built-in AI image tools. This page lays out the honest trade-offs so you can pick the right one, or use both.

The short version

If you came here searching for a free Photoshop alternative, the honest answer depends on what you actually do:

• Choose Photopea if your work is photo editing, retouching, compositing, or anything that involves opening and saving PSD files. Its interface deliberately mirrors Photoshop, so Photoshop muscle memory transfers almost directly.
• Choose PaintLasso if you want to draw and paint from scratch, sketch, illustrate, or make quick edits with AI tools like background removal, upscaling, and generative fill.

They aren't really rivals so much as complements. Many people keep both bookmarked: Photopea for pixel-precise photo work and file conversion, PaintLasso for painting and fast AI touch-ups.

Feature comparison

See the full PaintLasso feature list for details on brushes, layers, and blend modes.

Where Photopea shines

Photopea earns its reputation honestly. It's a remarkably faithful, in-browser Photoshop clone, and that's exactly its strength. If you already know Photoshop, the panels, menus, and shortcuts feel immediately familiar.

• Photo work: retouching, color correction, masking, and layered compositing are its bread and butter, with the kind of pixel-level precision photo editors need.
• File compatibility: it opens and saves PSD files, and also handles Sketch, XD, and GIMP formats, making it a genuinely useful tool just for opening files other apps created.
• No install, no account hurdles: load the page and start editing. The free tier is ad-supported, with an inexpensive ad-free upgrade if the ads bother you.

For most people whose main need is editing photos in the browser, Photopea is hard to beat.

Where PaintLasso shines

PaintLasso comes at things from the other direction. It's built for people who want to make images, not just edit existing ones.

• Painting and illustration: 16 brushes, 25 blend modes, layers, symmetry, a lasso tool, and even animation, tuned for drawing and painting rather than retouching.
• Built-in AI: a suite of AI tools including a background remover, image upscaler, image generator, and generative fill, all inside the same canvas you paint on.
• Fast and approachable: open PaintLasso in a browser and start sketching without the depth-of-menu learning curve a full Photoshop-style app brings.

What PaintLasso is not: it isn't a PSD editor, and it isn't designed for pixel-precise photo retouching. If that's your job, Photopea is the better fit.

The verdict: which should you use?

There's no single winner here, because they're built for different work:

• Pick Photopea for photo editing, retouching, compositing, and anything involving PSD or other design-app file formats. It's the closest free browser tool to Photoshop for photo work.
• Pick PaintLasso for drawing, painting, illustration, and quick AI-powered edits like removing a background or upscaling an image.

Honestly, the best setup for many creators is to use both: paint and generate in PaintLasso, then take a finished piece into Photopea if you need PSD output or detailed photo retouching. They cover each other's gaps nicely.

Related: Free Photoshop alternatives · AI tools · Features