Cloud, privacy and export

Chapter 10 · Cloud, privacy & export

Reviewed 4 November 2026 · Sources: Photopea storages and privacy documentation; independent PWA offline analysis; developer reply in issue #6760

Where files live and where they go when you finish is the part of a browser editor that determines whether it can be trusted with real work. Photopea's position is unusually clear: files are processed on your device, nothing is uploaded unless you explicitly save to a cloud service, and the editor connects to five storage backends plus its own. The export side is broad but has one conspicuous hole — there is no print path at all.

Storage backends

The home screen presents a storage browser rather than a blank canvas, which tells you what the product expects you to do: open something that already exists. Five backends are supported, and they behave consistently.

Cross-storage copying is supported, which is more useful than it sounds. You can move a file from Google Drive to Dropbox without it ever touching your local disk, which is exactly what you want when you are working on a borrowed machine or a locked-down corporate laptop.

The file manager itself is more capable than a minimal implementation would be. Tile, icon and list views; sorting by name, date or size; multi-select with Ctrl, Shift and Ctrl+A; and letter-jump keyboard navigation for long lists. Saving to storage is File > Save More > To Storage, and browsing is File > Open More > Storage.

PeaDrive and sharing

PeaDrive is Photopea's own cloud storage: half a gigabyte free, five gigabytes on Premium. Items can be shared with read-only or read-and-write permissions, which makes it usable for small team collaboration on assets even though there is no simultaneous editing. Transfers are encrypted over HTTPS, and the privacy documentation is explicit that Photopea does not store files outside the storage the user chooses.

Half a gigabyte is small for image work — a handful of layered PSDs will fill it — so the free tier is really a convenience for moving files between devices rather than a working store. Five gigabytes on Premium is workable for a solo designer and still small for a team.

Collaboration, or the absence of it

There is no real-time collaboration. Photopea has nothing comparable to Figma's multiplayer editing or Adobe Creative Cloud's shared libraries and commenting. Team accounts share storage and permissions, which means colleagues can open the same files, but they cannot edit them simultaneously and there is no conflict resolution because there is no concurrency.

This is worth stating plainly because the team pricing invites the wrong assumption. Paying for a team plan buys shared storage and single sign-on through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. It does not buy collaboration in the sense that a modern design team means. If your workflow requires two people in the same file, Photopea is not the tool regardless of plan.

The offline claim, examined

Photopea's documentation states that it can be used offline after loading. Independent analysis of the progressive web app found no active service worker cached, which would mean the application must be fetched from photopea.com each time the tab is closed and reopened. These two statements are not necessarily contradictory, and the distinction matters.

What is certainly true is that file processing is local. A PSD, XCF or Sketch file opened in Photopea is parsed and rendered on your device, not uploaded. So while the tab remains open, you can work with no network connection at all, including filters, adjustments and the local Spot Healing Brush.

What is uncertain is whether the application itself will load from a cold start without a network. If no service worker is caching the shell, it will not. Installing Photopea as a progressive web app changes the window type — it opens in its own frame rather than a browser tab — but does not change the network requirement. The honest summary is: offline editing works within a session, offline launching is unreliable, and features that need the network include the initial load, cloud storage, AI features and server-hosted fonts.

Privacy and data handling

The privacy documentation is unusually specific for a free product. Files are processed entirely on the device and never uploaded unless cloud save is chosen. Photopea never sends email. Account data is deleted after six months of inactivity, and you can request immediate deletion by writing to the support address. Logging in stores your name, email, the _ppp preferences cookie and payment data.

The exceptions to local processing are the AI features, which run on Photopea's servers, and font loading, which fetches from Photopea's font library. Both are user-initiated. If you are handling confidential material, avoid the server-side AI features and the online font library, and the remaining workflow stays on your machine.

Export formats

There is no watermark on exports, confirmed as of mid-2026, including on the free tier. That is worth stating because free browser tools frequently add one, and its absence is a real differentiator.

Export As opens a Save for Web-style dialog with format selection, quality control and output resolution. For most delivery work this is where you should be, rather than in the Save dialog, because it makes the format and quality decision explicit.

Printing and DPI

There is no print capability. The Print menu opens a Save for Web dialog set to PDF, and you print from an external application. This is not a bug or a missing driver; a browser sandbox cannot reliably hand a document to a printer with colour management intact, so the developer has not pretended otherwise.

The practical workflow for print output is: set the physical size and resolution in Image > Image Size, choosing inches or millimetres as the unit, then export PDF with Rasterize All checked so the output matches the canvas exactly. JPEG files preserve DPI on a round-trip, which the developer has confirmed, and a macOS PSD DPI detection issue has been fixed. PDF files are loaded at a fixed 144 pixels per inch because PDF has no inherent resolution, so do not expect a PDF's pixel dimensions to match its physical dimensions at 300 DPI.

What this chapter means in practice

The storage and privacy story is strong: local processing, explicit cloud saves, five backends and cross-storage copying. The export story is broad but ends at the file, with no print path and no autosave. For a browser-based workflow that is a reasonable trade, provided you build the habit of saving to a real file and printing from a dedicated application. Chapter 2 covers the PDF export modes in more detail, and chapter 11 covers what the plans actually buy.