Image editing questions, answered

Adobe has offered free trials and a limited free Photoshop app for phones, but full Photoshop on the desktop and the web is a paid subscription with an Adobe account. If what you need is one of the common jobs, such as removing a background, enlarging a photo, erasing an object, adjusting levels, cropping or exporting a smaller file, each has a free tool here with no account: start from the list of tools or the ImgVX AI Studio. Our free Photoshop alternative guide maps each Photoshop feature to the tool that does it.

It depends on the work. For layered design and heavy retouching, GIMP is a free desktop editor and Photopea is a free browser editor with layers. For quick, single jobs, a task-based site is faster because there is nothing to learn: ImgVX AI has 78 free tools, including on-device AI for background removal, upscaling and object removal, with no sign-up and no upload. The comparison in our guide covers when to use which.

Yes. Every tool on ImgVX AI runs in the browser you already have, on Windows, Mac, Chromebook, iPhone or Android, so there is nothing to install and nothing to update. That also makes it usable on school and work computers where installing software is blocked. Browsers, file formats and limits are listed in the help docs.

It depends on where your photo goes. Many online editors upload the picture to their servers to process it, and their privacy policy decides what happens next. ImgVX AI processes images inside your browser, including the AI tools, so the photo is never uploaded; the privacy policy lists the few things that are sent, such as sign-in details. Before sharing a photo anywhere, strip its hidden GPS location with the Metadata Remover.

Use browser-based tools, since most desktop editors do not run on ChromeOS. Open the tool in Chrome, add the photo from your Downloads or Google Drive folder, and save the result back. The Image Resizer, Image Cropper and Image Adjustments are quick on any Chromebook; the AI tools work too but run slower on low-cost models. For several edits in a row, the ImgVX AI Studio keeps them on one canvas with undo.

In a browser, open the Background Remover, add the picture and download a transparent PNG; the AI runs on your PC, so nothing is uploaded and nothing is installed. Windows 11 also has a Remove background button in the Paint app, which handles simple, clear subjects. For product photos on pure white, the Product Photo Studio adds the white backdrop and marketplace sizing in the same step.

The US State Department asks for a square JPEG between 600 x 600 and 1200 x 1200 pixels and no larger than 240 KB. Crop the photo square with the Image Cropper (or frame it in the Passport Photo Maker, which outputs 600 x 600), then run it through the Image Compressor at 200 KB. Do not retouch or filter your face: the photo must not be digitally altered, and the background should be plain white or off-white. Our passport photo guide covers lighting and framing.

Aim for 300 pixels per inch of print: 1200 x 1800 pixels for a 4 x 6, 1500 x 2100 for a 5 x 7 and 2400 x 3000 for an 8 x 10. Prints from 150 to 300 pixels per inch usually look fine at arm's length; below that they start to look soft. If your photo is short of pixels, enlarge it with the Image Upscaler, and crop to the print's shape first so the lab does not cut off heads. The DPI and print size guide has the full table.

Gmail allows 25 MB per message, but a 10 MB phone photo is slow for the person receiving it. Shrink it to about 2000 pixels on the long side with the Image Resizer and save as JPEG at around 80 percent quality, which usually lands well under 1 MB with no visible loss; or set a target in the Image Compressor. For many photos at once, the Bulk Image Resizer returns them in one zip.

Start from a sharp frame or photo and size it to 1280 x 720 with the YouTube thumbnail preset. Cut yourself or the product out with the Background Remover to place it on a bold colour, add a few large words with Add Text to Image, and keep the file under 2 MB with the Image Compressor. Check it at phone size: if the text is unreadable there, it is too small.

Straighten converging verticals with the Perspective Corrector, brighten dark interiors with Levels & Curves, and correct a yellow cast with white balance in Image Adjustments. A grey sky can be swapped with the Sky Replacer, but check your MLS rules first: many require that edits do not misrepresent the property, and some require virtually altered photos to be labelled. Resize for the listing site with the Image Resizer.

Use a well-lit photo taken at eye level against a plain wall. Soften a busy background with Portrait Blur or replace it with the Background Replacer, then make the square crop with the Avatar Maker, which sizes it for LinkedIn. Keep edits to light and framing: a profile photo should still look like you on a video call.

AI photo editing means using a trained neural network for a job that used to need careful manual work: cutting a person out of a background, filling in a gap where an object was erased, making a small photo larger with believable detail, or adding colour to a black and white print. Ordinary edits such as cropping, brightness or a filter follow a fixed formula, and the same input always gives the same output. An AI model instead predicts what the picture should look like, which is why it can handle hair and messy edges, and also why it can occasionally get something wrong. The AI tools on this site are labelled as AI only when they actually run a model.

Open the tool for the job in your browser, add the photo, and download the result: the Background Remover, Image Upscaler, Object Eraser and Photo Restorer cover most requests. The model is downloaded to your device once and then runs there, so you need no account. HD tools download free at standard size; full resolution uses a credit. If you want several edits on one photo, the ImgVX AI Studio puts every tool on one canvas with undo and a before and after view.

Not on ImgVX AI. Prompt-based editors, where you type something like "make it sunset" and a large model repaints the picture, run on big cloud servers, and they redraw the whole image, so faces and small details can change. Every tool here does one specific job instead, and leaves everything else in the photo untouched. For "make it sunset", the Photo Relighter changes the light and the Sky Replacer swaps the sky. There is also no text-to-image generation: the site edits photos you already have.

Open the tool in Safari or Chrome on the phone, tap to choose a photo from your library, and save the result back to Photos or Files. Nothing needs installing. The AI runs on the phone itself, so a recent phone is noticeably faster than an older one, and the first run of each tool waits for the model to download, which is best done on Wi-Fi. For a quick start on a phone, try the AI Photo Enhancer on a dull indoor shot or the Background Remover on a product photo. Our beginner guide to the site walks through it with screenshots.

For a single job, such as shrinking a photo for an email or removing a background, a tool that only does that job is easier than a full editor, because there are no layers or menus to learn. That is how ImgVX AI is organised: pick the task from the list of tools, and each page explains its settings in plain language. When you want to combine edits, the ImgVX AI Studio adds undo and a comparison view without the complexity of layers. If you later need layers and masks for design work, a desktop editor such as GIMP is free and worth learning.

On ImgVX AI there is no daily cap on editing and no watermark. The HD AI tools download free at standard size (up to 550 px), with the full-resolution file for one credit. Very large photos are scaled down to fit the browser's memory, and the AI tools take longer on older hardware. What you may edit is set by the Terms: only photos you own or have permission to use, and nothing that deceives or harms a real person. The tools work on objects, scenery, backgrounds, light and old prints; there are no tools for reshaping faces or bodies.

Use the Background Remover: add the picture and a segmentation model separates the subject from everything behind it, leaving a transparent PNG. Choose Fast for people and Best edges for products, pets and objects with fine outlines. It works best when the subject stands out clearly; glass, smoke and fine hair against a busy scene are the hard cases. Our guide to clean background removal edges covers how to fix halos and leftover fringes.

On iOS 16 and later you can touch and hold the subject in the Photos app and choose Copy or Share to lift it out, which works well on clear, simple shots. For more control, open the Background Remover in Safari: it gives you a choice of model, a preview against a checkerboard, and a PNG download you can save to Files, which keeps the transparency. To put the cut-out straight onto a new colour or photo, use the Background Replacer instead.

Remove the background and save as PNG or WebP, because JPEG cannot store transparency and turns those areas white. For a photo, the AI Background Remover finds the subject for you. For a logo or graphic on a flat colour, the Chroma Key Remover knocks out that colour instantly, which keeps sharp edges on text and lines. Our guide to transparent images explains which formats and sites keep transparency and which quietly fill it with white or black.

Open the Background Replacer, add the photo, and pick the new background: your own photo, a solid colour, a studio gradient or a blurred copy of the original. The blurred copy always looks the most natural, because its light already matches the subject. A new scene looks convincing when its light comes from the same side as the light on the subject. For online shop listings, the Product Photo Studio puts the item on a clean backdrop with a soft shadow at marketplace sizes.

Use Portrait Blur: it finds the person, pet or object, blurs everything else, and keeps the subject sharp, like portrait mode on a phone but for any photo you already have. Light strength keeps the setting recognisable; Strong isolates the subject. To blur a specific part of the picture instead, such as a number plate or a face in the crowd, use Pixelate & Censor, and for an even blur over the whole frame or its edges, the Image Blur tool.

Open Make Background Transparent, add the logo and download the PNG. It finds the white or flat background from the edges and stops at the outline, so white inside the logo stays white; choose "That colour everywhere" to clear the holes in letters too. For a photo of a person or product, use the Background Remover instead.

Sign plain white paper with a dark pen, photograph it in good light and open the photo in the Signature Extractor. The paper is removed even where your hand cast a shadow, and you download a cropped transparent PNG to place on a PDF or document.

Upscale it with AI rather than an ordinary resize. A normal resize spreads the existing pixels further apart and looks soft; the Image Upscaler uses a model trained on pairs of small and large photos to predict sharper edges and cleaner texture at 2x or 4x. It improves how the picture looks at a larger size, but it cannot recover detail the camera never captured, so tiny faces and small text can come out wrong. Always start from the largest original you have. Our guide on resizing without losing quality explains when upscaling is and is not worth it.

Work out how many pixels the print needs first: multiply the print size in inches by 300 for a sharp photo print, so a 6 x 4 inch print needs about 1800 x 1200 pixels. If the photo has fewer pixels than that, enlarge it with the Image Upscaler. If it already has enough, changing the DPI value is all a print shop needs, and the DPI Converter does that without touching a pixel. The DPI and print size guide has a table of common print sizes.

It depends on why it is blurry. A photo that is soft because it is small, heavily compressed or saved from a messaging app can be improved a lot with the AI Photo Enhancer or the Image Upscaler. A photo that is badly out of focus or smeared by camera shake has lost that detail, and no tool can truly bring it back; sharpening will only make the edges of the blur crisper. For a slightly soft shot, the Image Sharpener gives you control over how much is sharpened, so smooth areas like skin and sky do not turn grainy. Our guide on how to unblur a photo shows which kinds of blur can be fixed, with tests.

Three manual steps fix most dull or soft photos. First set the black and white points with Levels & Curves, which adds contrast without blowing out highlights. Then clean up grain with the Noise Reducer if the photo was taken in low light. Finally sharpen with the Image Sharpener, using a small radius and raising the threshold to protect smooth areas. Sharpen last, and after any resizing, because resizing changes how sharp the result looks.

For photos that already exist, open the AI Photo Enhancer in your phone's browser: it removes noise and compression blocks and restores crisp edges in one step. For future photos, most blur comes from three things: a smudged lens, too little light, which makes the camera use a slow shutter, and moving the phone as you tap the shutter. Wipe the lens, find more light, and hold still for a moment after pressing. Digital zoom also softens a picture, so step closer instead when you can.

A plain brightness slider lifts everything, so the sky and lamps blow out to white. Low Light & Dehaze lifts the dark areas a lot and the bright ones hardly at all, and smooths the grain it uncovers. It cannot invent detail in a photo that is almost black.

Open Low Light & Dehaze and choose Haze, fog or smog. It estimates how thick the haze is in each part of the picture, which is usually more in the distance, and removes it to bring back contrast and colour.

Open the Object Eraser, brush over the object and its shadow, and an inpainting model fills the area from what is around it. Only the painted area changes; the rest of the photo stays pixel for pixel as it was. It works best on grass, sand, sky, water, walls and other textured backgrounds. Large objects in front of detailed structure, such as a window or brick pattern, are harder, so remove them in smaller pieces and repeat on any part that looks smudged.

Use the Text Remover: Find text marks the lettering automatically, or you brush over it, and the marked area is filled from the surrounding picture. It handles captions, date stamps, timestamps and signs over fairly simple backgrounds well. Brush a little wider than each word to avoid faint outlines. Only remove text from images you own or have the right to edit. If you want to copy the words rather than remove them, the Image to Text tool turns them into editable text.

Run the photo through the Metadata Remover, which strips GPS location, camera details, dates and author fields without changing a single pixel. On an iPhone you can also tap Options on the share sheet and turn off Location before sending, but that only covers the location, not the other fields. To see what a photo contains before you share it, open it in the EXIF Viewer. Our EXIF and privacy guide explains which sites strip metadata for you and which do not.

Cover it with solid blocks or heavy pixelation in Pixelate & Censor, and download a new file. Avoid light blur and see-through highlighter pens: lightly blurred text can sometimes be read again, and a highlighter often shows the text underneath once the contrast is raised. Check the edges of the screenshot too, where notifications, account names and the time often sit. The guide to hiding information in screenshots lists the usual things people miss.

Scan or photograph the print well first, then run it through the Photo Restorer. It clears grain, blur and scanning marks, corrects fading and colour casts, and can add colour to a black and white print in the same pass. Scan at 600 DPI or more, or photograph the print flat in even daylight without glare, because a better scan gives a much better result. The restorer does not repair tears, creases or missing corners; paint those out afterwards with the Object Eraser. Our photo restoration guide covers scanning and storing originals.

Add the photo to the Photo Colorizer and choose Natural, Vivid or Subtle. A model trained on millions of colour photos predicts skin tones, skies, foliage and fabrics, while the brightness and detail of the original are kept exactly. On a typical laptop each photo takes around ten seconds after the model has downloaded. If the print is also faded or grainy, the Photo Restorer cleans it up and colorizes in one step.

No. The colours are an educated guess. Skies, grass and skin come out convincingly because they follow patterns, but clothing, cars, painted walls and flowers could have been any colour, so the model picks something plausible. If you know the real colour of something, such as a uniform or a family car, say so when you share the picture, or keep the black and white original alongside it. A cleaner scan gives the model more to work with, so a faded or grainy print is worth running through the Photo Restorer first.

Decide which size you mean. To make the file smaller, re-save it as JPEG or WebP at around 80 percent quality in the Image Compressor; at that level the difference is very hard to see on a screen, while the file usually shrinks a lot. To make the dimensions smaller, use the Image Resizer: shrinking a photo does not make it look worse, and a smaller photo also compresses to a much smaller file. Our guide to reducing image file size goes through both, step by step.

Set a target size in the Image Compressor: it tries quality settings until the file lands just under the limit, and reduces the pixel dimensions if quality alone is not enough. Forms that ask for a photo under 100 KB or 50 KB rarely need more than about 1000 pixels on the long side, so resizing first with the Image Resizer keeps the quality higher. Save as JPEG, because a PNG photo will be several times larger.

Open the HEIC to JPG converter in your browser and drop the photos onto it; it writes standard JPEGs that open in any program, and nothing is uploaded. Windows 10 and 11 can display HEIC photos once the HEIF and HEVC extensions from the Microsoft Store are installed, but many websites and older programs still will not accept the file. To stop the problem at the source, set your iPhone to Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible. Our HEIC explainer covers why iPhones use it.

Add the pictures to Image to PDF, put them in order, choose A4 or US Letter, and download one PDF with a picture on each page. It is the quick way to send photos of receipts, signed forms or handwritten pages to a portal that only accepts PDFs. If the pages were photographed at an angle, square them up first with the Perspective Corrector, and see the guide to scanning documents with your phone for getting a clean shot.

You cannot choose the format when saving: the browser keeps whatever the site sent, and most big sites send WebP. Save it, then drop the .webp file into the WebP to JPG converter and download a JPG that older programs and upload forms accept. Expect the JPG to be a little larger, and choose PNG instead if the picture has a transparent background. Our guide to converting images covers every common conversion.

Open PDF to Image, choose the PDF, set JPG (or PNG for pages that are mostly text) and download; several pages come back as one zip. Resolution 2 is about 144 DPI, enough for a screen, and 4 is about 288 DPI for printing. The pages become pictures, so the text is no longer searchable; Image to Text gets the words back.

Trace it with the SVG Vectorizer: set Colours to the number of flat colours in the logo, raise Detail if corners get rounded, and download the SVG, which stays sharp at any size. Start from the largest, cleanest copy you have, and check the result zoomed in, because tracing can leave small notches on letters. It does not work on photographs. The conversion guide shows a real before and after.

Use the Image Converter: add the file and choose the format to save as. Use JPG for photos that must open anywhere, PNG for screenshots, graphics and anything that needs transparency, and WebP when you want a smaller file for a website. Converting a JPG to PNG does not improve its quality; it only makes the file bigger. The image formats guide compares them in detail.

Open Image to Pixel Art, set how many pixels across (32 to 64 looks like a classic game sprite) and pick the colours: the photo's own, or a retro palette such as PICO-8 or the Game Boy greens. The blocks stay hard-edged at any download size.

Open Photo to Coloring Page, add a photo with a clear subject and adjust the line detail until the outlines are clean. Choose A4 or US Letter to get a page ready to print. A busy background makes a busy page, so remove it first with the Background Remover if needed.

Open Image to ASCII Art, set the number of characters across and copy the text. Paste it into a code block or a plain-text file; in a normal font the columns will not line up.

Open the 3D Photo & Depth Map tool. An AI model estimates how far away each part of the photo is, and the tool moves near things more than far ones to make a looping 3D motion GIF. It can also save the depth map itself for Blender or After Effects.

In the Image Cropper, lock the crop to the aspect ratio of the size you need, such as 1:1 for a profile picture or 4:5 for an Instagram portrait, drag the frame over the part to keep, then set the exact pixel size, either in the cropper itself or afterwards in the Image Resizer. Cropping to the right shape before resizing is what stops the picture being stretched. The aspect ratio guide lists the common shapes and the social media sizes guide the current sizes for each platform.

Place the photo on a background of the shape Instagram accepts, so nothing is cut off. The No Crop tool fits the whole photo inside a 1:1, 4:5 or 9:16 frame and fills the space with a blurred copy of the photo or a colour you choose. For a feed post, 4:5 takes up the most room on screen. The social media sizes guide has the pixel sizes for every platform.

Open the Photo Collage Maker, add between 2 and 9 photos, pick a layout, and adjust the spacing, corner rounding and background colour before downloading. Each photo is cropped to fill its cell, so keep the important part of each photo near its centre. For a single photo cut into tiles, such as an Instagram grid post, use the Image Splitter instead.

Cut the subject out with the Background Remover and download it as a PNG, which keeps the transparent background that makes a sticker look cut out. To add a soft shadow so it stands out on any background, run the PNG through Drop Shadow. If you want to put stickers onto a photo instead, such as hearts, stars or emoji, the Photo Stickers tool does that.

Open Image to Text, add the screenshot, photo or scan, choose the language, and copy the recognised text. Screenshots and printed pages photographed flat in good light read very accurately; handwriting, curved pages and decorative fonts cause mistakes, so always proofread names and numbers. Cropping to just the text and straightening the page with the Perspective Corrector first makes a noticeable difference.

Photograph the page from straight above in even light, then open it in the Document Scanner: shadows and the yellow cast of a lamp turn into clean white paper. Square up a page shot at an angle with the Perspective Corrector first, and combine pages with Image to PDF.

Open Colour Grading & LUTs, choose My own .cube LUT file and pick your file; Strength blends it with the original. The ten built-in looks, such as teal and orange, can also be downloaded as free .cube LUTs for Premiere, Resolve or Photoshop.