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Chapter 08 · AI features
Photopea's AI story is smaller than its interface suggests, and the gap between what it offers and what Photoshop offers is wider here than anywhere else in the product. Four features exist: background removal, Magic Replace, text-to-image generation and the content-aware Spot Healing Brush. Only the last of those is free and local. The rest are credit-gated, and the credit system is the part most people find confusing, because the interface does not clearly distinguish between AI that runs on your device and AI that runs on a server.
What exists
| Feature | Where it lives | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Background removal | Select > Remove BG | 1 credit, or one ad view | One-click cut-out; exports cleanly as PNG |
| Magic Replace | Select an area, then the AI option | 3 credits, or one ad view | Replaces the selected area with generated content; subject to an area size limit |
| Text-to-image | Generative panel | Credits | Stable Diffusion-based model |
| Spot Healing Brush | J | Free | Content-aware fill computed locally on your device, not a server call |
The distinction in the last row is the one that matters most and is least clear in the interface. The Spot Healing Brush is content-aware and it feels like AI, but it runs locally and does not consume credits. Background removal, Magic Replace and text-to-image run on Photopea's servers, which is why they cost credits and why they require a network connection. If you are working with confidential images, the local tools are the ones you can use without a data-transfer question.
The credit economy
On the free tier you get roughly one AI action per day. When those are exhausted, you can watch a short advertisement for a single additional use. Premium includes 3,000 credits per month, with background removal costing one credit and Magic Replace costing three. Credits are a Premium entitlement; free users get ad-gated access rather than a credit balance.
Three thousand credits is a large allowance for occasional use and a small one for production. At three credits per Magic Replace, a Premium month buys a thousand replacements, which sounds generous until you are iterating on a composite and burn through fifty attempts on one image. If AI replacement is central to your workflow rather than occasional, the credit model is a worse deal than a subscription with unmetered generative fill, and that is a straightforward comparison to make against Photoshop or a dedicated generative tool.
Premium is sold as a fixed-duration pass of 30, 90 or 365 days and does not auto-renew. When it expires the account reverts to the free tier with ads, a smaller cloud allowance and ad-gated AI. That is unusually honest pricing for a product in this category, and it means there is no risk of an unwanted renewal charge. It also means you should buy it when you need it rather than leaving it running.
What is missing
The list of absent features is long, and it is worth reading as a category list rather than a feature list, because the categories are what determine whether Photopea fits an AI-heavy workflow.
| Photoshop capability | Photopea status |
|---|---|
| Generative Fill with multiple models | Not available; Magic Replace is a narrower inpainting tool |
| Generative Upscale | Not available; Image Size uses interpolation only |
| Neural Select Subject | Object Selection exists but is not equivalent to Photoshop's neural selection |
| Harmonize (AI composite blending) | Not available |
| Automatic sky replacement | Not available |
| AI colourisation | Not available |
| Automatic noise reduction | Not available; the Reduce Noise filter is conventional, not neural |
| Neural Filters (portrait, style transfer) | Not available |
| Camera lens profile correction | Not available |
| XMP sidecar read and write | Confirmed not planned |
The pattern is that Photopea has implemented the two AI features with the clearest standalone utility — cut a subject out, remove an object — and stopped there. It has not built the layer of generative assistance that Photoshop now wraps around almost every operation. For a retoucher in 2026 that is a meaningful difference: tasks that take one click in Photoshop take ten minutes of manual work here, or require exporting to another tool.
It is also worth noting the timeline. Background removal was announced in December 2023 and Magic Replace in May 2023. The most recent blog entry at the time of writing covers version 5.6 from April 2024, and no new AI feature has been announced since. That does not mean development has stopped — Photopea ships continuous updates — but it does mean the AI feature set has been static for a long period while competitors have moved substantially.
The opt-out question
There is no way to disable generative AI features in the interface. A feature request asking for an opt-out was closed by the developer in October 2025 with the response that if you think it is wrong to use a certain feature, you should simply not use it. That is a defensible position for a tool where every AI action is explicitly initiated by the user, and it is a frustrating one for organisations that need a technical control rather than a policy instruction.
The related complaint is about signalling. The Generate with AI button appears prominently on the new-document screen, which leads some users to assume that ordinary operations might be sending data to a server. They are not. The Spot Healing Brush is local, background removal and Magic Replace are explicit server calls, and nothing is uploaded unless you invoke one of them or save to cloud storage. The interface could make that clearer, and it does not.
What this chapter means in practice
If AI is a convenience for occasional cut-outs and object removal, Photopea's implementation is adequate and the credit model is fair. If AI is central to how you work — generative fill as a compositional tool, neural upscaling, automatic masking on complex subjects — Photopea is not the right application and the gap is not closing quickly. Chapter 19 places this alongside the CMYK and plugin limitations as one of the three reasons a professional might choose a different tool despite Photopea being free.