PixelForge Help Documentation

A complete guide to PixelForge, from opening a photo to saving it.

Last Updated: November 12, 2026

1. Getting Started

PixelForge has seven tools in the bar at the top: Open, Crop and turn, Adjust, Text and watermark, Background, Collage and Save. Open a photo first: drop it anywhere on the page, paste it, press Open photos, take one on a phone, or press Try an example for a photo of an apple to play with. The start screen also has six tasks, such as Remove a background or Make a photo smaller, which open a photo and go straight to the right tool.

Once a photo is open, it sits on the stage with the tool's panel beside it on a wide screen and under it on a phone. Every tool works on the same photo, every change can be undone, and nothing changes the photo itself until you save.

2. Opening Photos

PixelForge opens JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF (its first frame), BMP and other pictures your browser can read. The photo is turned the way the camera held it. Several photos at once ask what to do: make a collage, edit many at once, or edit the first one. HEIC photos from an iPhone open only where the browser can read them; the site's HEIC converter turns them into JPG. Camera RAW, PSD, TIFF and PDF files are not pictures a browser can open, and a message says what to do instead.

3. About This Photo

The Open tab shows the photo with Keep editing, Save and Close this photo, and what is known about it: its name, size in pixels and megapixels, file type and size, and from the camera details inside a JPG file the date it was taken, the camera, the aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focal length, and whether the file holds the place it was taken. Pictures saved by PixelForge never keep these details.

4. The Stage

The stage shows the photo with your changes, drawn quickly while you move a slider and in full a moment later. Hold Before (or the B key) to see the photo before your changes. The square button shows actual pixels, with the stage scrolling, or fits the photo to the screen again. Under the photo, the size it will be saved at is shown.

5. Crop and Turn

• Turn and mirror: Left and Right turn by a quarter, Mirror flips left to right and Upside down flips top to bottom; the crop stays on the same part of the photo.
• Straighten: up to 45 degrees either way, in tenths of a degree. The crop shrinks so no empty corners show, or tick Keep the corners to keep the whole turned photo with see-through corners.
• Shape: Free, Original, Square, 4:5, 3:4, 2:3, 9:16, 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, A4 and 35 x 45 mm keep the box to that shape; Turn the shape swaps tall and wide.
• The box: drag it or its eight handles; the arrow keys move it when it has focus, with Shift by 10 pixels. Exact numbers sets its left, top, width and height in the photo's pixels.
• Cut off plain edges finds borders of one colour around the photo and crops them away. Reset puts the crop back.

6. Light and Colour

Auto fix sets the light and colour for the photo; Reset all puts every slider and the look back. The sliders come in four groups, each from -100 to 100 unless noted:

• Light: Brightness, Contrast, Bright parts, Dark parts, Whites and Blacks. Bright and dark parts follow a blurred copy of the photo's light, so detail inside them stays.
• Colour: Warmth, Tint, Colour boost (lifts dull colours more than strong ones), Colour strength and Shift colours (-180 to 180 degrees).
• Detail: Clarity (contrast of the middle tones), Sharpen, Smooth (softens skin and noise while keeping edges) and Blur, the last three from 0 to 100.
• Effects: Dark corners (or light corners below zero), Grain and Faded, the last two from 0 to 100.

Double-click a slider to put it back, or type a value in its box. A dot marks every slider that was moved.

7. Looks

Looks are ready-made styles, each shown as a small picture of your own photo: Original, Auto, Vivid, Warm, Cool, Golden hour, Bright and airy, Matte, Film, Teal and orange, Cinematic, Moody, Dramatic, Pastel, Vintage, Cross process, Lomo, Sunset, Black and white, B and W strong, Noir, Sepia and Negative. Each is a set of the same sliders, some with a tone curve, colour toning or black and white of its own. Strength sets how much of the look is used, and your sliders work on top of it.

8. Text and Logos

Add text, then type it (Enter starts a new line; the buttons add the copyright sign and the year). Choose a font (Clean, Modern, Classic, Elegant, Poster, Handwritten, Signature or Typewriter), bold or italic, a colour, the size as a part of the photo's shorter side, how see-through it is and its angle. Outline, shadow and box adds an outline in a colour, a shadow, a box behind the text in a colour and strength, letter spacing and, for several lines, how they line up. Add a logo places a picture; a PNG with a see-through background looks best. Drag a text or logo on the photo, pull its corner to resize it, move it with the arrow keys when its box has focus, or place it in one of nine spots. In the list, each can be hidden, copied, brought forward or removed; Delete removes the chosen one on the photo.

9. Watermarks

Quick watermark adds the copyright sign, the year and your name, shop or website, across the photo as a faint repeated pattern or in a corner. Any text or logo can be repeated across the photo, with the space between set by a slider. Keep these as my watermark keeps the texts and logos you made in this browser, a logo of up to 200 KB; Use my watermark adds them to another photo, and Many photos at once can add them to a whole set. Because sizes follow the photo's shorter side, the watermark looks the same on every size of photo.

10. Finding the Subject

Under Background, Find the subject looks for the person, pet or thing that stands out and follows its edges; Draw a box around it is best for busy photos; Remove a colour suits a green screen, a white page or a plain wall. Dark red shows what is removed (turn it off with Show removed parts in dark red). Fix any part with marks: Keep and Remove paint roughly over it, Box draws a new box, and Off lets the page scroll freely on a phone. With Snap to edges on, the cut follows the photo's edges from your marks; off, it paints exactly where you brush. Brush size, Undo last mark and Clear marks help. Finding the subject runs in your browser, from the photo's colours and edges, so a subject that stands out from its background works best.

11. A New Background

• Edge: Soft edge (low is crisp, high keeps fine hair soft), Grow or shrink (drops a thin line of old background), Feather, and Clean edge colours, which takes the old background's colour out of the soft edge.
• Behind the subject: See-through, a Colour (white, greys, black, blues, red, green, cream, pink or your own), a Blur made only from the background's own pixels, or a Picture you choose.
• Shadow under the subject adds a soft shadow below and behind it.
• Put the background back turns it all off again.

Save as PNG or WebP to keep a see-through background; JPG fills it with the fill colour chosen in Save.

12. Collage

Add up to 40 photos, or add the photo being edited. PixelForge chooses a layout for the number of photos (Fitted rows above 16); pick another from the 35 layouts or Fitted rows, which shows every photo whole in rows of a height you set. Choose the shape (Square, 4:5, Story 9:16, 16:9, 3:2, 2:3, A4, A4 wide), Space between, Outer edge, Round corners and a colour or blurred background. Click a cell to choose it: zoom from 100 to 400 percent, Show the whole photo, Choose a photo, Centre or Empty the cell. Drag inside a cell to move its photo, use the mouse wheel to zoom, drag the grip onto another cell to swap, and drop a file on a cell. Save the collage with a long side of 1,080 to 4,096 pixels as JPG, PNG or WebP, or Add text or a watermark to open it in the editor.

13. Saving a Photo

• File type: JPG, PNG, WebP and, where the browser can make it, AVIF; Quality from 30 to 100 for all but PNG.
• Size: Full size, a Long side (16 to 16,384 pixels), an Exact size with common sizes and Crop to fill, Fit inside or Stretch, or a Percent from 5 to 200.
• Keep the file under a size: from 5 KB; the quality goes down first and then the size, until it fits.
• Fill colour for JPG and for Fit inside; Print size writes 72, 150, 300 or 600 dots per inch into the file.
• File name: type one, or the photo's name with -edited is used.

Save picture downloads it; Copy puts it on the clipboard; Share sends it where your device offers sharing. The size of the file is worked out before you save, and the result shows its size and pixels. Saved files hold no location, camera details or editing notes.

14. Many Photos at Once

Choose photos under Many photos at once (up to 300). Tick what to use from the open photo: the look and light, text and watermark at the same place and size, the shape (cut from each photo's middle), turns and mirroring, and the background (found again in each photo, slower); or Auto fix the light and Add my watermark. The size and file type come from the Save tab, and the ending typed under Added to each name goes after each file's name. Start works through the photos one by one and gives one zip; Cancel stops after the current photo.

15. Limits

PixelForge opens pictures of up to 200 MB and 250 megapixels, and opens a photo over 60 megapixels smaller. One photo holds up to 50 texts and logos (each text up to 1,000 characters), 60 logos and backgrounds, 200 background marks with 20,000 points in all, and 24 removed colours. A saved picture is at most 16,384 pixels on a side and 100 megapixels. A collage holds 40 photos, and Many photos at once takes 300 photos and stops when the files made reach 1,000 MB. The last 80 changes can be undone.

16. Keyboard and Accessibility

• The keys work while you use the tool (the focus is in it, or nothing has the focus and the tool is on the screen): 1 to 7 switch tools, B (held) shows the photo before your changes, Z shows actual pixels, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y undo and redo, Ctrl+S saves with the current settings, Ctrl+O opens photos, Ctrl+V pastes a picture, the arrow keys move the crop box, a text or a collage photo (with Shift further), Delete removes the chosen text or picture and ? opens the help.
• Every button and box can be reached with Tab; groups of choices move with the arrow keys; changes are announced to screen readers.
• With reduced motion on in your device, the page's own animations are switched off.

17. Privacy and Your Data

The photos you open are read, edited and saved in this browser and never sent to a server. Your choices in Save and for the brush, and your watermark, are kept in this browser under one entry named for this tool; the photo you are editing with its changes and pictures (up to 150 MB) and your collage (up to 150 MB of photos) are kept in a small database of its own, so they come back after a reload. Neither is made until you open a photo or change a setting. Close this photo and Start over remove them. Settings and work from the original PixelForge app, if this browser has them, are brought over once. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, this page shows ads; the Privacy Policy explains them.

18. How It Was Checked

Before this page was published, the engine behind the tool was checked: 20,508 cases in 14 groups. Every slider and look was compared pixel by pixel with a separate program written from the same formulas; the blurs, the soft edge, the colour removal and the edge cleaning were compared with their published formulas; the cut was compared with an exact minimum cut on test pictures and the subject found in drawn test photos; saved files were read back by another program to confirm the print size and that no location or camera details were left; the camera details of test photos were read and compared; saved settings, kept photos, collages and watermarks made to break the tool were checked value by value; and file names and picture sizes were tried with hostile input. Then the page was tried at four screen widths in both themes, with every tool, every way of saving, large photos and many photos.

19. Troubleshooting and Support

• A photo does not open. The browser cannot read it (HEIC, RAW, PSD, TIFF or PDF), or it is over 200 MB or 250 megapixels; the message says which.
• No clear subject was found. Draw a box around it, or paint over it with Keep.
• The background is white in my saved file. JPG has no see-through parts; save as PNG or WebP.
• The file is still too big. Choose JPG, a smaller size, or Keep the file under a size.
• My photo did not come back after a reload. It is kept per browser and device, and not when it and its pictures are larger than 150 MB; a private window or cleared browser data starts afresh.
• AVIF or Share is missing. This browser or device does not offer it.

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form.