How the editor works
This guide walks through every tool in the photo editor, the keyboard shortcuts, and the details that decide how your export looks: working resolution, the order of edits, frames and file formats. It also covers the editor's limits honestly, so you know when another tool is the better choice.
The editor opens one image at a time. Your photo becomes the bottom layer, and everything you add on top of it, such as text, arrows, shapes, drawings and stickers, is a separate element that you can select, move, resize, rotate, restyle or delete until you export. Colour adjustments and filters apply to the photo layer only, so your text and arrows keep their exact colours.
Photos larger than 3000 pixels on their longest side are scaled down to 3000 pixels when they open. This keeps the editor responsive on laptops and phones, and 3000 pixels is still more than enough for social media, listings and most prints up to around A4. If you need the full original resolution, for example to print a large poster, do your edits in a specialised tool instead. Default text size and line width are set in proportion to the photo, so a large photo and a small screenshot both start with sensible sizes.
Step by step
- Drop a photo on the page or click to choose one. You can also send a result from another tool here with Edit further in the photo editor.
- Pick a tool from the toolbar above the photo: text, draw, arrow, line, rectangle, ellipse, pixelate or crop. A hint under the photo tells you what to do, for example drag from the start to the tip for an arrow.
- Use the Style panel to set colour, opacity, line width or font, size, bold and italic. With an element selected, the same controls change that element, and buttons appear to duplicate it, move it forward or backward, or remove it.
- Open the Adjust panel for one-click filters, frames, and sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation and blur, plus black and white and sepia.
- Rotate or flip from the toolbar, and use undo and redo freely as you work.
- Open the Export panel, choose JPG, PNG or WebP, set the quality, and press Download. You can also send the result to Compress, Resize, Convert or Image to PDF.
Tools and keyboard shortcuts
| Tool or action | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Select and move | V | Select, drag, resize and rotate elements |
| Text | T | Click to place text; type to replace the placeholder |
| Draw | B | Freehand brush in the current colour and width |
| Arrow | A | Drag from the start to the tip; the head scales with line width |
| Line | L | Straight line with rounded ends |
| Rectangle | R | Outline box, or a filled box with Fill shape on |
| Ellipse | O | Outline or filled circle and oval |
| Pixelate | P | Drag over an area to hide it with large blocks |
| Crop | C | Drag the box handles, then Apply crop |
| Apply crop | Enter | Confirms the crop box while cropping |
| Back to select | Esc | Leaves the current tool |
| Undo | Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z | Steps back, up to 40 steps |
| Redo | Ctrl+Shift+Z, Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Shift+Z | Steps forward again |
| Duplicate | Ctrl+D or Cmd+D | Copies the selected element, slightly offset |
| Delete | Delete or Backspace | Removes the selected element |
Looks, frames and stickers
The eight filters, Original, Vivid, Punch, Fade, Mono, Noir, Sepia and Vintage, are simply preset positions of the adjustment sliders. After choosing one you can still fine-tune brightness or contrast, and Reset adjustments returns the photo to its original colours.
- Border: a coloured rectangle around the edge, in the current colour. It is an ordinary element, so you can select it later and change its colour or width.
- Polaroid: adds white margins around the photo, deeper at the bottom, which makes the image larger. There is room in the bottom margin for a caption.
- Rounded: clips the corners of the whole picture. Export as PNG or WebP to keep the corners transparent; JPG fills them with white.
- Stickers: a star, heart, tick, cross, speech bubble, burst, arrow badge and location pin. Each appears in the centre in the current colour and can be resized like any element.
Worked example: a photo for a sale listing
Say you are selling a bike and have a 4032 × 3024 phone photo of it parked on the street, with the number plate of a car visible behind it and a scuff on the frame you want to point out honestly.
When you open the photo, the editor works at 3000 × 2250 pixels. Press C and drag the crop box to cut away the empty pavement, then press Enter. Choose the Punch filter in the Adjust panel to lift the colours slightly.
Now press P and drag over the car's number plate. The area is replaced with large blocks; the block size follows the photo size, roughly the longest side divided by 90, so on a 3000 pixel wide photo each block is about 33 pixels across. Press A and drag an arrow from empty space to the scuff, then press T, click beside the arrow and type a short label. Pick white text with the bold option so it reads well over the street.
Finally, in the Export panel choose JPG at around 85 percent, which is plenty for a listing, and press Download. If the listing site limits file size, choose Continue with Compress instead and set the limit there.
Order matters for pixelate and adjustments
A pixelated area is a snapshot of what was underneath at the moment you drew it, turned into blocks. Two things follow from that. First, if you change brightness or apply a filter afterwards, the photo changes but the pixelated block keeps its old colours, which can leave a visible patch. Do your colour adjustments first and pixelate last. Second, if you drag a pixelated block away inside the editor, the original detail is still there underneath. The block only becomes part of the image when you export, so leave it where you drew it, or delete it and draw a new one.
For hiding many faces in a group photo, the separate Blur Face tool finds them automatically, which is faster than pixelating each one.
Choosing an export format
- JPG: smallest files for photos and accepted everywhere. Quality between 80 and 90 percent is a good balance; transparent areas are filled with white.
- PNG: lossless, so text, arrows and screenshot details stay crisp. Files are larger for photos. Keeps transparency, including rounded corners.
- WebP: smaller than JPG at similar quality and supports transparency. Most modern apps and websites accept it, but check before sending it to a form.
The export panel starts on the same format as the file you opened. After a download it shows the exact pixel size and the file size, so you can tell whether to lower the quality.
Limitations and troubleshooting
- Your edit is not saved anywhere. Refreshing or leaving the page discards it, so download before you close the tab.
- There are no layers panel, masks, clone or healing tools. Elements can be brought forward or sent backward, but never below the photo.
- The Impact and Script fonts use fonts installed on your device. If a device lacks them, a similar font is shown instead, so text may look slightly different on another computer.
- Undo keeps the last 40 steps. Opening another image starts a fresh history.
- On phones, very large photos may feel slow while dragging sliders. Each slider applies the filter to the full working image, so shrinking the photo first with Resize image makes them more responsive.
- Shortcut letters do nothing while you are typing in a text element. Click outside the text first.
How this compares with online editors
Many online editors upload your photo to their servers, and some require an account before you can download. In return they may offer saved projects, templates, layers and generative features that this editor does not have.
Here the photo stays in your browser from start to finish: nothing is uploaded, there is no account and no watermark. There is no model to download, and with Pro the installed app works offline. The trade-off is a simpler feature set and a working resolution of up to 3000 pixels on the longest side.