PhotoFresco

Getting started

A tour of the PhotoFresco editor — the toolbar, options bar, panels and canvas — plus how to open, edit and save your first image.

PhotoFresco is a free, Photoshop-style image editor that runs entirely in your browser. There is nothing to install and no account to create: open photofresco.com/app/, and the editor is ready in seconds. Everything — rendering, brushes, filters, file handling — happens on your own machine.

Open the editor

Head to the editor. You'll land on the start screen, where you can:

PhotoFresco's start screen, with New file, Open, presets and recent files
  • Create a new document — pick a size and background in the New Document dialog (also File ▸ New later).
  • Open a file — PSD files and regular images (PNG, JPEG, and other browser-readable formats) via File ▸ Open.
  • Reopen recent work — File ▸ Open Recent remembers what you had open.
  • Browse My Documents — a built-in library (File ▸ My Documents…) that stores documents in your browser, so they survive closing the tab.

Opening a file is a local read: the image goes from your disk into the tab, not to a server. See the FAQ for the details of the privacy model.

The interface at a glance

The layout mirrors what you know from desktop editors:

The New Document dialog over the PhotoFresco workspace, showing the toolbar, canvas, options bar and right-side panels
  • Menu bar (top) — File, Edit, Image, Layer, Type, Filter, Select, View, Window, Plugins and Help. If you're hunting for a command, it's here.
  • Toolbar (left) — the tools, grouped Photoshop-style. One button per group; press the group's key letter to switch to it, press Shift + the letter to cycle within a group, or long-press / right-click the button for the fly-out list. The foreground/background color chips sit below the tools (X swaps them, D resets to black & white), with the Quick Mask (Q) and screen-mode (F) toggles at the bottom.
  • Options bar (under the menu) — settings for the active tool: brush size and hardness, selection feather, wand tolerance, type controls, and so on.
  • Panels (right) — Layers, Properties, Adjustments, History, Color, Brushes, Channels, Paths, Navigator and more. Toggle any panel from the Window menu; drag tabs to rearrange, or tear a panel out into a floating window. View ▸ Workspace can save or reset your arrangement.
  • Canvas (center) — your document, in tabs when several are open. View ▸ Arrange offers side-by-side layouts.
  • AI prompt box (bottom) — type a prompt, pick a model, and generated images land in your document as layers. See AI generation & credits.

Your first edit

A quick loop to get a feel for the app:

  1. Open an image (File ▸ Open).
  2. Press B for the Brush and paint a stroke — size and hardness live in the options bar, [ and ] change the size as you work.
  3. Press M and drag a rectangular selection, then apply an adjustment — Image ▸ Adjustments ▸ Curves affects only the selected area.
  4. Made a mess? ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z undoes; the History panel (Window ▸ History) shows the whole trail — the last 64 steps are kept.
  5. Add a layer in the Layers panel and try a blend mode from its dropdown.
  • Zoom — ⌘+ / Ctrl++ and ⌘− / Ctrl+−, ⌘0 / Ctrl+0 to fit the document on screen, ⌘1 / Ctrl+1 for 100%. The Zoom tool is Z.
  • Pan — hold Space and drag, or use the Hand tool (H).
  • Rotate the view — Shift+H cycles to Rotate View; double-click its toolbar button to reset.
  • Rulers, guides and grid — ⌘R / Ctrl+R toggles rulers; guides, smart guides, grid and pixel grid live under View ▸ Show, with snapping under View ▸ Snap To.

Saving your work

PhotoFresco's native format is PSD — the same layered format Photoshop uses.

The Export As dialog, with PNG, JPEG and WebP format choices and scaling controls
  • Save / Save As (⌘S / Ctrl+S) writes a .psd file to your machine with layers, masks and styles intact.
  • File ▸ Export ▸ Export As… produces a flattened PNG, JPEG or WebP — with a quality slider for JPEG/WebP and 0.5×/1×/2× scaling. Quick Export as PNG skips the dialog.
  • Save to My Documents keeps a copy in the in-browser library so it's there next visit, even offline.

Unsaved work is autosaved to your own device as you edit — if the tab crashes or closes, the next visit offers to recover your document with pixels, layers and masks intact (and it never left your machine). Undo history doesn't survive a closed tab, though, so ⌘S / Ctrl+S is still the habit worth keeping.

Where to go next

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