How to use Image Studio
- 1Drop in an image, or a batch to apply the same edit to all of them
- 2Add steps to the stack — crop, resize, rotate, flip, adjust, blur, black and white, remove background, erase or blur brush
- 3Toggle, reorder or delete any step; the image rebuilds from the original each time
- 4Use the blur brush to obscure faces, plates or anything else
- 5Export the finished image, or the whole batch as a ZIP
What Image Studio does
Most image tools apply an edit and hand back a new file. Chain three of those together and you have re-encoded the picture three times, each pass adding compression artefacts on top of the last, with no way to revisit a decision you made two steps ago without starting over.
A layered editor avoids that by storing what you asked for rather than what it produced. Each step is a description — crop to this rectangle, raise contrast by this much, blur this area — and the visible image is rebuilt by replaying the whole stack against the untouched original whenever anything changes. Turning a step off restores exactly what came before it, because nothing was ever overwritten.
When to use it
- Preparing a photo properly
- Straighten, crop, lift the contrast and export once. Doing the same thing across three single-purpose tools means three rounds of re-encoding and three chances to lose detail.
- Obscuring private details
- The blur brush paints over faces, number plates, addresses and screen contents. Because it renders into the exported pixels, the detail is genuinely gone rather than hidden under an overlay someone could remove.
- Consistent edits across a set
- Build the stack on one image, then apply the identical sequence to a whole batch and download them as a ZIP. Useful for product shots or anything that needs to look like a series.
- Trying an idea without committing
- Every step can be switched off and back on. Comparing a crop with and without a background removal is a toggle, not a re-export.
Image Studio settings explained
- Crop
- Trims the frame to a rectangle, with an optional corner radius. Applied first in the stack, so everything after it works on the cropped image rather than the original frame.
- Resize
- Scales the image up or down. Sits early so later steps operate at the final resolution — blurring before a resize would give a different result from blurring after it.
- Rotate
- Turns by any angle, not just multiples of 90°, with a background colour for the corners a free rotation exposes. Straightening a slightly tilted horizon is the common use.
- Flip
- Mirrors horizontally, vertically, or both. Horizontal flips are common for selfies, where the camera preview is mirrored and the saved file is not.
- Adjust
- Brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and opacity in one step. Because the stack is non-destructive, pushing contrast hard and pulling it back later costs nothing — the original pixels are always the starting point.
- Blur
- Softens the whole frame, or everything outside a focal area to imitate shallow depth of field. Distinct from the blur brush, which is painted by hand.
- Black & white
- Eleven greyscale conversions. There is no single correct way to discard colour — a red-channel conversion darkens skies and smooths skin, while a luminosity conversion matches how the eye weights brightness.
- Remove background
- The same AI segmentation used by the standalone background remover, available as a step in the stack with its own feather and background colour, so it can be combined with crops and adjustments in one export.
- Erase and blur brushes
- Paint parts of the image away to transparency, or paint blur over them. Both have adjustable size and softness, and both are stored as strokes so they can be toggled like any other step.
Why the step order is fixed
| Stage | Steps | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Geometry | Crop, resize, rotate, flip | Settle the frame before anything is painted into it |
| Colour | Adjust, black & white | Applied to the final pixel grid, not the original |
| Selective | Blur, remove background, brushes | Need the finished geometry and colour to work against |
Limits and what to expect
- 100 MB per file, 50 files per batch and 300 MB per queue.
- Images beyond roughly 100 megapixels are refused, because an oversized browser canvas renders blank instead of failing.
- Step order is fixed and cannot be rearranged — steps can only be enabled, disabled and removed.
- Projects are not saved; closing the tab discards the stack along with the image.
- The background-removal step downloads a model once, 24 MB or 114 MB depending on which you choose.
Troubleshooting
- A step does not seem to do anything
- Check whether a later step is overriding it — a black and white conversion after a saturation increase makes the saturation invisible. Toggle the later step off to see the earlier one's effect on its own.
- The blur brush strokes are in the wrong place after cropping
- Crop is applied before the brushes in the fixed order, so changing the crop moves the frame underneath strokes already painted. Settle the crop first, then paint.
- The exported image lost its transparency
- It was saved as JPEG, which has no alpha channel, so erased or background-removed areas are filled with a solid colour. Export as PNG or WebP to keep transparency.
- Editing became slow
- Every change replays the whole stack against the full-resolution original. That is what makes it non-destructive, but a long stack on a very large image is heavy — disable the steps you are not currently adjusting.
Your files and your privacy
Every step runs on your own device: canvas operations for the geometry and colour work, and a locally downloaded model for background removal. No version of the image is uploaded at any stage, including intermediate states. That matters here more than for a single-purpose tool, because the blur brush is most often used precisely on things that should not be sent anywhere.
What to use next
FAQ
Are my edits destructive?
No. Each step is kept as a separate layer in the edit stack, so you can toggle, reorder or delete any of them and the image is rebuilt from the original every time.
Can I edit several images at once?
Yes. Load a batch, build your edit stack on one image, then apply the whole stack to every image and download them as a ZIP.
Is the blur brush a real edit or just an overlay?
A real edit. The blur is rendered into the exported pixels, so the underlying detail no longer exists in the output file. That is the important difference from drawing a shape over something in a document — an overlay can be moved or deleted by whoever receives the file.
Why are there eleven black and white conversions?
Because there is no single correct way to remove colour. Each conversion weights the red, green and blue channels differently: a red-channel conversion darkens blue skies and smooths skin, while a luminosity conversion matches how the eye perceives brightness. Comparing them on your own photo is the fastest way to choose.
Can I save a project and come back to it?
No. The stack lives in the tab's memory and is discarded when it closes — the direct consequence of nothing being uploaded, since there is no server holding a copy. Export before you navigate away.
Is this a replacement for Photoshop?
No. There are no layers in the compositing sense, no selections beyond the brushes and background removal, no text and no filters beyond what is listed. It covers the edits most photos actually need, without an install, an account or an upload.