Photopea vs RawTherapee

Photopea is a browser-based editor for raster and vector graphics, with tools for image resizing, webpage design, illustration, and photo processing. Its editing toolkit includes layers, masks, blending, smart objects, adjustment layers, channels, paths, filters, and vector tools. It opens and saves PSD files and lists support for formats including PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF, AI, HEIC, TIFF, MP4, INDD, and Figma. Photopea also offers one-click background removal and image-part replacement from a text description. It says files are processed on the user's device and can still be opened, edited, and saved offline. Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive can be connected optionally. Browser installation creates a homescreen icon but still runs the editor in a browser; a separate self-hosted package can run on a customer server or local network without internet access. The free editor has a free plan. School ad-free access costs $450 a year for the whole school. The self-hosted version is listed at $5,002,000 a month, paid a whole year in advance.

RawTherapee is a free desktop program for developing raw images on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its non-destructive, 32-bit floating-point engine handles raw files from many digital cameras, including HDR DNG, as well as JPEG, TIFF, and PNG images. Photographers can control demosaicing and development with multiple algorithms, use masking tools, and batch process images. Editing parameters can be copied or pasted across files, and the program can also be used from a command line. RawTherapee can open raw images from GIMP as a plugin and return edited images there, or send processed images to GIMP or another editor. It is libre software under the GNU General Public License version 3, with RawPedia documentation and a community forum for help. The project says it does not include digital asset management, printing, or uploading features. The macOS 5.13 build has different minimum system requirements for Apple Silicon and Intel, and must be installed in /Applications to start.