Three Reasons Why I Dumped Photoshop for Photopea
I was a longtime user of Photoshop. And I mean long — I first used it for my high school newspaper and yearbook back in 1995.
I really like how there were different levels of use. You could learn and get by on a basic set of tools. And then it was like magic when a more advanced user showed you a new tool. Or, back before YouTube, you could read blogs and other resources to learn new tools.
Yet, even with the release of Photoshop’s flashy new Generative Fill tool, I recently decided to dump my monthly Adobe subscription.
Why I’m now using Photopea in place of Photoshop
You can access Photopea immediately, for free, by going to www.photopea.com. I love that their browser-based platform is ready for your ideas right away; you don’t need to download and install a new app, nor even to complete a free registration.
Here’s why I’m digging Photopea, and why Adobe has a high bar to earn me back as a user:
Cost. A basic subscription to Adobe is $10 per month. That does include access to several other apps besides Photoshop, but they’re ones I don’t use. If you want the flexibility of a monthly subscription so you can cancel any time and not be out the remaining cost of an annual subscription when cancelling, then Photoshop is $120 per year. Side note: part of why I enjoyed sticking it to Adobe by cancelling my subscription was that you used to be able to pay 2-3x the current annual cost and own the program forever.
An easy learning curve. I don’t know how Photopea got away, legally, with closely mimicking Photoshop’s interface, but they did and therefore PS users will take to it very quickly. And with fewer tools and a slightly better (IMO) overall interface, new Photopea users with no prior PS experience should pick it up pretty fast as well.
It opens and allows you to edit Photoshop (.psd) files. Since I have a large backlog of personal and client PSD files, this was the most important factor to me after cost.
Cons of Photopea
So far, ads showing in the browser is my only con for Photopea. However, many browsers can disable this so you end up seeing no ads while working on your project. That’s how I have it set up in Firefox.
I’ll update this post if I discover more cons while using Photopea. I’ve used it for about two months.
One more thing
Since I’ve described Photopea so favorably here, you may be wondering if I’m an affilate for them. I am not — however, I did recently become an affiliate for a website visitors lead generation solution, which I shared in my last post.
Do you use Photopea? What do you think of it?
Let me know. I love hearing about user feedback for marketing and design tools, especially newer ones like Photopea.
