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Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

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Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#11

Post by esalman »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #4
foobarian wrote: post #3

> But it has a few problems. It takes up a ton of computing power and battery, which makes it difficult to use on old/slow computers. And the biggest thing, cost. Given it's a Javascript program I'm not sure how Photopea solves those problems with Adobe Photoshop other than cost.

Photopea is very usable on lower-spec machines that grind to a halt when Photoshop is open. It also "boots" almost instantly, and doesn't require installing anything other than a browser.

True, I have used it briefly on sub $100 Chromebooks.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#12

Post by foobarian »

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #4
foobarian wrote: post #3

> But it has a few problems. It takes up a ton of computing power and battery, which makes it difficult to use on old/slow computers. And the biggest thing, cost. Given it's a Javascript program I'm not sure how Photopea solves those problems with Adobe Photoshop other than cost.

Photopea is very usable on lower-spec machines that grind to a halt when Photoshop is open. It also "boots" almost instantly, and doesn't require installing anything other than a browser.

Yes, certainly, but the article seems to imply that the author solved those Photoshop problems by creating a Web-based tool, while the actual solution is to make a lightweight tool.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#14

Post by forte124 »

sdfhbdf wrote: post #5

There is little to no time spent in this article on how photopea is monetized. I even went to the product itself to find out but couldn’t, at least on mobile. Is there some subscription? What do you pay for? Genuinely asking since I used it a few times and never noticed any payment nagging.

Sorry, I interviewed Ivan and he said roughly 90% of the revenue comes from ads.

I also asked him if he considered creating his own header bidding system, but he said this wasn’t worth it

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#15

Post by tomcam »

FortiDude wrote: post #13

Photopea should be GIMP's permanent embarrassment. I can't believe running a webapp offline written by a single person is more viable than a native program developed by a vast amount of contributors over decades.

Whenever I see posts like this my immediate reflex is to remind the complainant to have a little respect for the creators. But it’s really hard to disagree with this…

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#17

Post by ignoramous »

> ...Ivan spent the better part of 10 years slowly building out Photopea! He's solved over 4,000 feature requests and issues on GitHub alone!

Amazing feat to not only have the skill but the patience to make something people want. Projects rarely die in mid-keystroke. Keep typing, Ivan.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#18

Post by Normille »

farisjarrah wrote: post #6
jollyllama wrote: post #2

Interesting, never heard of it. I've been using Affinity since ~2017.

photopea is one of the best examples of a web application imo. Its a full featured image editing software just running in your browser. No sign up or login required and you can just upload and quickly work off a local file for your computer. You just fire it up and start working.

Agreed. As a longtime Photoshop user, I was gobsmacked the first time I used Photopea at just how good it was. Gobsmacked even more when I found out it was all written in JS and completely running in the browser with no server backend.

EDIT: apparently my enthusiasm is outdated. I just tried to load the site in Firefox [latest version] and got the following error:

"Your browser is too old (no WebAssembly). Please, update it."

What a shame!

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#19

Post by donohoe »

FortiDude wrote: post #13

Photopea should be GIMP's permanent embarrassment. I can't believe running a webapp offline written by a single person is more viable than a native program developed by a vast amount of contributors over decades.

I've tried GIMP so many times over the years and yeah, it remains miserable to use. I wish it were not so.

Re: Photopea: A free Photoshop alternative making millions

#20

Post by utopcell »

foobarian wrote: post #12
SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photopea is very usable on lower-spec machines that grind to a halt when Photoshop is open. It also "boots" almost instantly, and doesn't require installing anything other than a browser.

Yes, certainly, but the article seems to imply that the author solved those Photoshop problems by creating a Web-based tool, while the actual solution is to make a lightweight tool.

Isn't it all the more impressive that it can perform better than a native lightweight app ?
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