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Chapter 15 · Every panel and every panel control
Panels are where Photopea hides its state. The tool rail is visible and the menus are discoverable, but a document's actual structure — which layer is clipped to which, which mask is disabled, which channel is active, which history state you are on — lives in the right-hand dock and is invisible until you open the right panel. This chapter walks the dock panel by panel, listing the controls at the top, the list in the middle and the icon row at the bottom, because that three-part layout is consistent across almost every panel and once you know it you can read a panel you have never opened.
One structural point governs everything else: Photopea's panels are docked and cannot be floated freely. You can open and close them from the Window menu, and they stack in the dock, but you cannot tear one out onto a second monitor or collapse the dock to an icon strip. For a single-screen browser workflow that is mostly a benefit, because the workspace cannot drift into chaos. For anyone who has tuned a multi-monitor Photoshop layout, it is the first thing they miss.
Layers
The Layers panel is the most important panel in the application and the one with the most controls packed into the least space. The top row carries the blend mode dropdown and the opacity field, with a lock icon group beside them. Below that is the filter row: a search field that filters layers by name, and a set of type filters for pixel, adjustment, type, shape and smart object layers. The main area is the stack itself, top layer at the top of the list and background at the bottom, with a visibility eye on the left of each row and a thumbnail, name, link icon and effect indicator on the right.
| Control | Location | Behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Blend mode dropdown | Top left | Twenty-seven modes in family groups. Applies to the active layer and to any layer selected with it. |
| Opacity field | Top right | 0–100 per cent. Typing a value and pressing Enter applies it; arrow keys step it. |
| Lock buttons | Top right, beside opacity | Four locks: transparency, pixels, position, all. Each is an independent toggle. |
| Layer filter search | Below the top row | Filters the stack by name substring. Useful in a fifty-layer PSD. |
| Type filters | Beside the search | Show only pixel, adjustment, type, shape or smart object layers. |
| Visibility eye | Left of each row | Hides the layer without deleting it. Alt-click isolates a single layer. |
| Thumbnail | Each row | Ctrl-click loads the layer's transparency as a selection. |
| Link icon | Between layer and mask thumbnail | Toggles whether the mask moves with the layer. |
| Effect indicator | Right of each row | Expandable list of applied layer styles, each with its own eye. |
| Mask thumbnail | Right of layer thumbnail | Alt-click views the mask alone; Shift-click disables it. |
| Clipping indicator | Left of the layer name | A down-arrow means the layer is clipped to the one below. |
| Lock-all icon | Right of the row | Shows a padlock when the background layer is locked. |
The bottom icon row is the fastest route to the most common operations, and it is worth memorising as a sequence rather than as individual buttons. From left to right: link layers, layer style, add raster mask, add adjustment layer, add group, new layer, and delete. The adjustment-layer button opens a flyout with the full adjustment list, which is the same list as Layer > New Adjustment Layer and the same list as the Adjustments panel.
Right-clicking a layer opens the context menu that carries the operations with no icon: Convert to Smart Object, Rasterize, Duplicate, Delete, Clipping Mask, Merge Down, Merge Visible, Flatten Image, and the mask submenu. This menu is where most experienced users work, because it is faster than the top menu bar and it is contextual to the layer you clicked.
Dragging a layer onto the tab bar of another open document moves it into that document. Dragging a file from the desktop onto the canvas inserts it as a Smart Object; dropping it onto the tab bar opens it as a new document. Dragging a layer between two others reorders it, and holding Alt while dragging duplicates it. Those four gestures cover almost all layer movement.
Channels
The Channels panel lists the composite RGB channel, the three individual colour channels, any layer mask in the document, and any alpha channels you have saved. Visibility eyes work per channel, and the rendering rule is worth stating precisely because it is not obvious: with a single colour channel visible the canvas renders as greyscale, and with several non-RGB channels visible the extras render as a red overlay on top of the colour composite. That red overlay is the Quick Mask view, and it is the same rendering path.
The bottom row has four icons: load channel as selection, save selection as channel, create a new empty channel, and delete channel. Saving a selection as a channel is the only way to persist a selection inside the file, and it is how you build a library of masks you can recall after closing and reopening the document.
Two modifier behaviours are worth memorising because they are the whole reason the panel exists for advanced work. Alt-clicking a layer mask thumbnail shows that mask alone in greyscale with every other channel hidden, which is how you inspect a mask's actual values. Alt+Shift-clicking adds the mask as a red overlay alongside the colour channels, which is how you see where the mask is protecting and where it is not, in colour context. Clicking a channel selects it, and from that point every paint, adjustment and filter operation applies only to that channel.
The advanced use is luminosity masking. Because you can load any channel as a selection and then save a modified version as a new alpha channel, you can build masks that are derived from the image's own tonal structure. Photopea has no dedicated luminosity-mask automation, so the workflow is manual: duplicate a channel, apply Curves or Levels to shape it, load it as a selection, and save it. It is slower than a scripted Photoshop action but it is fully possible, and it is the technique that separates competent compositing from slider-pushing.
Paths
The Paths panel lists named paths in the document. Each row has a thumbnail, a name and a visibility state, and the bottom row carries four icons: fill path with foreground colour, stroke path with brush, load path as selection, and delete path. A path can also be converted to a vector mask or turned into a shape layer, and both of those operations live in the Layer menu rather than in the panel.
Paths are resolution-independent, which is the reason to use them for anything that will be resized: a logo traced with the Pen tool stays crisp at any output size, while a rasterised version does not. The panel also holds the working path that the Pen tool writes to when you are in Path mode, so if you draw a path and then wonder where it went, this is where it is.
History
The History panel is a linear list of document states with an initial snapshot at the top. Clicking any state reverts the document to that point, and every subsequent action from there creates a new branch, discarding the states that were ahead. The panel has no branching tree, which means you cannot keep two divergent undo paths alive at once — a real difference from some editors and a limitation worth knowing before you experiment destructively.
The panel's controls are a snapshot button, a delete-state button, and a settings menu that sets the maximum number of states. That maximum is finite and it is one of the things Premium improves, doubling the retained steps. In practice the limit bites during long retouching sessions with many small brush strokes, and the mitigation is to take a snapshot at each significant milestone rather than to rely on a deep undo stack.
There is a subtlety in the shortcuts that trips up almost everyone. Ctrl+Z toggles between the last two states, so pressing it twice returns you to where you started rather than stepping back two operations. To walk backwards you need Step Backward on Alt+Ctrl+Z, or a click in the panel. That is not a bug; it is the same behaviour Photoshop has, and it is the reason the panel exists.
Actions
The Actions panel is a three-level tree: action sets at the top, actions inside a set, and individual recorded steps inside an action. The bottom row carries record, play, create new set, create new action, and delete. A menu on the panel adds playback speed, a toggle for whether to include a step in playback, and the save and load commands that write and read ATN files.
Recording captures adjustments, filters, transforms, layer creation and most menu commands, but not every operation in the application can be recorded, and the developer has said more coverage is planned. When a step is not recorded, the action silently does less than you expect, which is the main reason to test an action on a duplicate before running it across a folder. Loading an ATN from Photoshop works because the format is compatible, and each ATN file corresponds to one action set.
Properties
Properties is the contextual panel, and its contents change entirely depending on what is selected. With an artboard selected it shows exact width, height and position. With a shape layer selected it shows fill type and colour, stroke type, colour, width, position and dash, plus corner radius for rectangles. With a type layer selected it shows font, size, colour, alignment and the OpenType switches. With an adjustment layer selected it shows that adjustment's full parameter set, which is the fastest way to re-edit a Curves or Hue/Saturation layer without reopening a dialog.
Because it is contextual, Properties is the panel that rewards keeping open. It is the only place where an adjustment layer's parameters are editable after creation without going through a modal dialog, and it is the only place where a shape's fill and stroke are editable without the options bar.
Character and Paragraph
Character carries font family, style, size, leading, tracking, kerning, horizontal scale, vertical scale, baseline shift, text colour, and the OpenType toggles for ligatures, stylistic alternates, superscript, subscript, all caps, small caps, underline and strikethrough. It also has a language selector that affects hyphenation and spell-check behaviour. Everything in the panel is per-character, which means you can mix fonts and sizes inside one text layer without creating separate layers.
Paragraph carries the seven alignment buttons, left and right indent, first-line indent, space before and after, a hyphenation toggle, and a base-direction selector. That last control is the one that matters for bidirectional text: Photopea auto-detects writing direction, but mixed Arabic or Hebrew with Latin needs an explicit base direction or the punctuation lands on the wrong side. It is a small control with an outsized effect on whether the application is usable in those scripts.
Brush
The Brush panel is the full brush engine, and it is considerably deeper than the options bar suggests. The top section is Tip Shape: angle, roundness, hardness and spacing, with a live preview of the dab. Below that are the dynamics sections — Shape Dynamics, Scatter, Texture, Dual Brush, Color Dynamics, Transfer and Brush Pose — each with its own enable checkbox and its own parameter set. The bottom section is the preset gallery, with the current brush highlighted and buttons to create a new preset, delete one, and import or export ABR files.
Two brush kinds exist and they behave differently. A circular brush is generated procedurally at any size and has a Hardness parameter, so it stays smooth when scaled up. A pattern brush is a raster image and pixelates when enlarged beyond its native resolution. That distinction is why a brush you downloaded looks soft and blocky at 500 pixels while a round brush at the same size is crisp.
The panel also exposes the stylus behaviour. When the device reports pressure, two toggles appear in the options bar — pressure controls size and pressure controls opacity — and the Brush panel's Shape Dynamics section lets you map pressure to angle, roundness and minimum diameter as well. With a drawing tablet this turns Photopea into a credible painting application; with a mouse, the dynamics are inert.
Swatches, Gradients, Patterns and Styles
Swatches is a grid of saved colours with add, remove, replace and load-from-file controls, plus a menu for the standard colour libraries. Gradients is a preset grid with a thumbnail preview per gradient, and clicking a preset loads it into the Gradient tool; the panel's menu opens the gradient editor and the load and save commands. Patterns is the equivalent grid for pattern presets, used by fill layers, pattern overlays and the paint bucket. Styles is the layer-style preset grid, with load and save as ASL, and it is the fastest way to apply a saved bevel-and-shadow combination to a new layer.
All four panels share the same interaction model: click to apply, right-click for a context menu with rename and delete, and a panel menu for import and export. Learning one means you can use all four, which is why they are grouped here rather than described separately.
Info and Navigator
Info shows live cursor coordinates, the dimensions of the current selection, and colour readouts for the foreground and background sample points. It also shows the numeric delta while you drag a transform, which is the only way to see exactly how far you have moved something without opening a dialog. The panel's colour readouts follow the document's colour mode, so a CMYK document shows CMYK values.
Navigator shows a thumbnail of the whole document with a red viewport rectangle you can drag to pan, plus a zoom slider and a percentage field. On a large document zoomed in far enough that the viewport rectangle is tiny, Navigator is faster than scrolling to find your place. It is a small panel and it is easy to leave closed, but it is the only overview of the document that stays accurate while you are deep in a corner.
Adjustments
The Adjustments panel is a grid of icons, one per adjustment type, and clicking any of them creates a new adjustment layer with that adjustment. It is functionally identical to Layer > New Adjustment Layer and to the flyout on the Layers panel's adjustment button, and it exists because it is the most discoverable of the three routes. For a beginner it is the correct entry point; for anyone experienced it is redundant.
Libraries
Libraries holds reusable colours, character styles and layer styles that persist across documents. It is the closest thing Photopea has to a design-system feature, and it is deliberately minimal: there is no component system, no shared spacing scale and no team sync. For a solo designer maintaining a palette across a set of documents it is useful; for a team it is not a substitute for a shared library in a design tool.
Plugins
The Plugins panel lists installed plugins with their icons and an Add Plugin button. A plugin is a JSON configuration with a name, URL, icon and panel dimensions, and it opens in an iframe inside the dock. Communication runs over the browser's postMessage channel, which lets a plugin execute scripts, push image data, brushes, fonts or patterns into the document, and request the current file in a chosen format. Plugins can be commercial, with sign-in and payment handled inside the iframe.
That architecture is the reason Photopea cannot run native Photoshop plugins: a .8bf plugin is compiled machine code and the browser cannot execute it, which the developer has confirmed would require a virtual machine and months of work. The iframe plugin system is a genuine substitute for web-based extensions, but it is not a substitute for the commercial Photoshop plugin ecosystem, and for some workflows that is the deciding limitation.
Reading any panel in ten seconds
Every panel in the dock follows the same three-part grammar, and once you internalise it, an unfamiliar panel is readable immediately. The top is the global control for the panel's subject — the blend mode and opacity for Layers, the tip shape for Brush, the font for Character. The middle is the list or grid of the things the panel manages. The bottom is a row of icons for creating, duplicating and deleting those things. If you cannot find a control, it is almost always in one of those three places, and if it is genuinely absent then the operation lives in a menu instead.
The panels that are missing compared with Photoshop are as informative as the ones that are present. There is no Layer Comps panel, so variant exploration is manual. There is no Animation timeline panel, only the layer-name convention described in chapter 09. There is no 3D panel, no Measurement Log, no Paragraph Styles panel beyond the Libraries entry, and no Brush Presets panel distinct from Brush. Chapter 16 continues the inventory with every modal dialog and its controls.