Pro Designer: Photoshop-style editing in your browser

The home screen has New file, Import a graphic (a photo, PNG, JPG, WebP, SVG, PDF or PSD opens at its own size as your starting point), Import as reference (pick a page size; the graphic goes on top, locked and half see-through, to design over), From Graphics Library, and your recent projects. You can also drop a photo or PSD anywhere on the page. New file shows sizes by what they're for: Social, Print (built at 300 dpi with 1/8 inch of bleed on every side), Web, and Email (the standard 600-pixel-wide sizes), plus any width and height in pixels or inches and a white, transparent or colored background. Print sizes include business cards, postcards, flyers, rack cards, door hangers, brochures, stickers, menus, posters, yard signs and banners (big prints are built at 150 or 100 dpi, which is what wide-format printers use); email sizes include header, banner, hero, full-width, two-column, footer and signature banner; social adds X, Pinterest, Facebook cover, LinkedIn banner and TikTok.

File > Place Picture adds a photo from your computer as a new layer; the Library tab on the right places one from your Graphics Library; the Brand tab places your Logo Kit logos; File > Place AI Picture makes one from words. Pasting a copied picture (⌘V) also adds it as a layer.

File > Save Project (⌘S) saves the whole document with every layer, mask, text, style and adjustment, and puts its link in the address bar. File > Open Project lists your saved projects. Leaving the page with unsaved changes asks first.

The toolbar on the left has every tool, grouped like Photoshop, with the same single-letter shortcuts (V Move, M Marquee, L Lasso, W Magic Wand, C Crop, I Eyedropper, J Healing, S Clone Stamp, B Brush, E Eraser, G Bucket/Gradient, O Dodge/Burn, T Type, U Shapes, H Hand, Z Zoom; press the letter again with Shift to switch between tools that share it). At the bottom are the foreground and background colors: D sets black and white, X swaps them. The All tools switch at the top right shows every tool, or just the essentials.

The options bar under the menus changes with the tool: brush size, hardness, opacity and flow; selection mode and feather; wand tolerance and Contiguous; gradient type; font and size; shape and colors; crop ratio. [ and ] change the brush size; the number keys set brush opacity.

Scroll to move around, pinch or ⌘-scroll to zoom, hold Space to drag with the hand. ⌘0 fits the picture, ⌘1 is 100%. Drag from a ruler to place a guide; drag it back out to remove it. While moving a layer it snaps to the center of the page. The status bar shows the zoom, the size (and inches for print), the cursor position and the active layer.

The Layers panel lists everything top first with a thumbnail. Click to select, double-click the name to rename, drag to reorder, click the eye to hide. Above the list: the blend mode (Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light and 11 more), Opacity, Lock and Clip (clips the layer to the one below it, like ⌥⌘G). At the bottom: layer style (fx), add or delete a mask, new adjustment layer, group, new layer, delete.

Kinds of layers: photo (pixel) layers you paint on; text layers that stay editable (click them with the Type tool, or change font, size, color, tracking and leading in Properties); shape layers (rectangle, rounded, ellipse, line, triangle, polygon, star, arrow, heart) with fill and stroke; adjustment layers that change everything under them without touching the pixels; and groups. Layer > Rasterize turns text or a shape into pixels when you want to paint on it.

Layer masks: click the mask thumbnail to paint on it (black hides, white shows, grays partly show), Shift-click it to turn it off. Layer > Layer Mask has Reveal All, Hide All, Reveal Selection, Apply and Delete. Layer styles add a drop shadow, stroke, outer glow or color overlay. Layer > Merge Down, Merge Visible and Flatten Image combine layers.

Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee (Shift keeps it square or round), Lasso (draw freely), Polygonal Lasso (click points, click the start or press Enter to close), Magic Wand (click a color; Tolerance sets how close, Contiguous keeps it to touching pixels, Sample all layers looks at the whole picture) and Select Subject, which finds the main subject with free AI on your own device.

Hold Shift to add, Alt (Option) to subtract, both to keep only the overlap, or pick the mode in the options bar. Select > Inverse, Reselect, Deselect (⌘D) and Modify (border, smooth, expand, contract, feather). The selected area shows marching ants. Painting, fills, filters and adjustments only change what's selected; ⌘J copies it to a new layer.

Brush, Pencil and Eraser paint on the selected photo layer (or its mask). Paint Bucket fills similar colors, Gradient draws a linear or radial blend from the foreground color to the background color or to transparent. The Eyedropper picks a color from the picture (Alt-click for the background color).

Clone Stamp copies one part of the picture onto another: Alt-click (Option-click) where to copy from, then paint. Healing Brush does the same but matches the light and color of where you paint, so skin and textures blend. Spot Healing removes a spot or blemish: paint over it and it fills from the best matching patch nearby when you let go.

Dodge lightens and Burn darkens (choose shadows, midtones or highlights), Sponge adds or removes color, and Blur, Sharpen and Smudge work where you brush.

Image > Adjustments changes the selected photo layer: Brightness/Contrast, Levels (⌘L), Curves (⌘M, drag points on the curve), Exposure, Vibrance, Hue/Saturation (⌘U, with Colorize), Color Balance (⌘B), Black & White, Photo Filter, Gradient Map, Color Look, Invert (⌘I), Posterize, Threshold, Desaturate and Auto Tone. Each shows a live preview. The same adjustments are in the Adjustments panel as adjustment layers, which you can change any time in Properties.

The Filter menu has Gaussian, Motion and Box blur, Sharpen and Unsharp Mask, Add Noise, Reduce Noise and Film Grain, Mosaic, Emboss, Find Edges and Vignette, each with a preview. The Magic tab (and Filter > Magic effects) has one-click Auto-enhance, Brighten colors, 10 color looks (Teal & orange, Golden hour, Film, Matte, Cinematic, Pastel, Noir, Pop, Warm, Cool), duotone in your brand colors, Remove background (as a mask you can edit), Portrait blur, Color splash and Enlarge 2×. The subject tools and Enlarge run free on your own device.

Remove tool (J): brush over a person, a wire, a sign or a blemish and let go; it disappears and the spot is filled from what's around it. With a selection, Edit > Remove (⇧⌫) or the Remove button does the same for the selected area. Use Generative Fill only when you want to ADD something new.

Object Selection (W): click any object (a cup, a chair, a person, a product) and it's selected; Shift-click adds another. Select > Sky selects the sky; Image > Smart fixes > Replace Sky (or the Magic tab) adds a new sky (clear blue, sunset, golden hour, dusk or soft overcast) on its own layer with a mask you can paint.

Image > Smart fixes: Auto Straighten (finds the tilt from the lines in the picture and levels it, filling the corners), Auto White Balance (removes a yellow or blue cast), Smooth Skin (softens skin tones only, keeps eyes and edges sharp), Smart Denoise (smooths grain, keeps edges), Match Color (makes one photo take on another's light and color), Recolor to Brand (moves the picture's main colors to your brand colors), and Color Palette from Photo (the picture's main colors as swatches). Red Eye (J) fixes a red pupil with one click.

Image > Resize for Every Size makes the design in every social size at once: Smart crop keeps the subject (found on your device) in frame, or Fit puts the whole design on a soft blurred backdrop so nothing is cut off. Download them all or save them to the Graphics Library (folder Pro Designer/Sizes).

Ask aiKit knows these tools too: “remove the sign on the left”, “straighten it”, “fix the color cast”, “new sunset sky”, “use my brand colors” all run the free versions.

Edit > Free Transform (⌘T) puts a box around the layer or the selected pixels: drag inside to move, drag a corner to scale (proportional; Shift for free), drag outside to rotate (Shift snaps to 15°), ⌘-drag a corner to distort or make perspective, ⌘⇧-drag a side to skew, and hold Alt to work from the center. Press Enter or Commit to apply, Esc to cancel. Edit > Transform has flips and 90° and 180° turns.

The Crop tool: drag a box (pick a ratio: free, original, square, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, 3:2), adjust the handles, then Enter. Image > Image Size resizes everything, Canvas Size adds or removes space around the picture (pick where it stays), Image Rotation turns or flips the whole picture, and Trim removes transparent edges.

Type or dictate any change in the bar under the picture and press Do it: “make the sky bluer”, “brighten her face a little”, “blur the background”, “add SALE in big red letters at the top”, “remove the sign on the left”. aiKit looks at the picture and uses the editor's own tools: it selects the right area, adds adjustment layers, runs filters, adds text and shapes, or uses Generative Fill. Every change is a normal step in History, so you can adjust or undo any part.

Every request is a checklist. Anything that wasn't done is shown first under Not done yet with the reason; the rest has a check mark. Undo this puts the picture back to before the request. Rate each result with a thumbs up or down; Send and fix it asks again with your note.

Generative Fill: select an area, then press Generative Fill (or Edit > Generative Fill) and describe what should be there, or leave it empty to remove what's there. The new pixels arrive on their own layer, masked to your selection. It uses a little AI credit.

Export (⇧⌘E) offers PNG, JPG, WebP, PDF (for print sizes: 300 dpi with the 1/8 inch bleed, the trim size set in the file and optional crop marks), SVG and PSD (layers, groups, masks, opacity and blend modes; text and shapes as pictures; adjustment layers with their effect applied). Pick a size for screen formats (email sizes default to 2× so they stay sharp on phones), then Download, or Save to Graphics Library with a category, tags, client and project.