An Image to Layers alternative, compared honestly

What they do well, stated plainly

Their own documentation, checked 29 July 2026: they generate native PSD files with proper layer groups and transparency, accept JPG, PNG and WebP, process images up to 4096×4096, and offer downloads as transparent PNG layers, a structured ZIP, or an editable PSD. Their free Starter trial is 20 one-time credits with no subscription. So the old "they only hand you a PNG stack" argument does not hold, and neither does a blanket resolution complaint — 4096×4096 is a real working size. If a comparison page tells you otherwise, it is out of date, and ours was.

And where they are cheaper

This is the part a comparison page usually leaves out, so: on credits per dollar they beat us. Their Creator plan is $10 a month billed yearly ($120 for the year) for 12,000 credits, or $19 month-to-month; Studio is $30 a month billed yearly ($360) for 36,000 credits, or $49 month-to-month (all from their own pricing, checked 29 July 2026). Ours is a monthly plan, or a one-off pack whose credits never expire — see the pricing page for current prices in your currency. A credit is not the same unit between two vendors — theirs and ours buy different operations — so treat that as directional rather than a like-for-like ratio. The comparison that actually matters is how many of the things you need are metered at all, and on our side the entire browser-side pipeline is not.

One: a free tier that makes no network call

This is the difference that is architectural rather than a policy choice, and it is the one we would lead with. Their product is a server pipeline: you upload, it processes, you download. Ours has a whole free tier that runs in your browser — the segmentation model, the editor, the colour separator, the PSD writer and the ORA writer all execute on your machine, so the image never leaves it. You can confirm that by opening your browser's network tab and watching nothing happen during a separation. That is not a privacy promise you have to trust; it is an absence of a request. It matters for licensed artwork, NDA'd client files, unreleased campaign material, and anything a lawyer made somebody sign for.

Two: retention, 24 hours against 7 days and up

When something does get uploaded, how long it lives is a fair question to ask both vendors. Theirs is answered in their own privacy policy: they keep files "only as long as needed to provide downloads (e.g., 7 days on Free, longer on paid plans)" — quoted verbatim, checked 29 July 2026 — and their plan documentation describes longer windows on paid tiers. Ours is 24 hours for anything sent to the optional server features, and it is enforced by a storage lifecycle rule on the bucket rather than by a promise in a document, which is why we are willing to write the number down. Neither approach is dishonest; longer retention is how you offer re-downloads. It is a trade, and you should know which side of it you are on.

Three: text comes back as real type, not as pixels

Both products can deal with text, but not in the same direction. Their published feature list includes a Remove Text from Image workflow — detect and remove text automatically while rebuilding the hidden background behind it — and we could find no claim on their site that the words are written back as editable text (checked 29 July 2026; if that changes, this paragraph is the one to distrust first). Here the text is recovered rather than only removed: OCR and a vision pass read each line, the original pixels are erased and the background inpainted, and each line is written into the PSD as a genuine Photoshop type object. We verify that on every build by re-opening the written file with an independent PSD library and confirming the text still reports as live, re-typeable type with its size and colour intact. Being straight about the limits: ornate logos and intertwined monograms are flagged rather than faked, and heavily warped or hand-lettered type is better grabbed as an object.

Four: non-destructive masks, and what is in the file

A cutout can be stored two ways and only one stays editable. Bake the transparency into the alpha channel and the hidden pixels are gone; attach a mask channel alongside untouched pixels and painting the mask white brings them back. We write masks — every lifted selection arrives as a real mask channel — which is the clearest tell of a writer that cares what happens after the download. The rest of the file: numbered groups (10 BG, 20 Objects, 30 FX), a named layer per element, and every reconstructed region prefixed AI_Fill_.

Five: OpenRaster, and no watermarks anywhere

If your pipeline ends in GIMP or Krita, PSD is a translation step and every translation step is a failure mode. We write OpenRaster — a spec-correct .ora with the mimetype stored first, a stack.xml describing layer order and names, and one lossless PNG per layer — which those tools read as their home format, and that export has no cap and never will. And on watermarks: there are none, on any tier, ever. The free tier caps quantity — one PSD export a day on a free account, unlimited ORA and PNG-stack exports — and never degrades quality, resolution or edges. A capped number of full-quality files is a better deal than an unlimited number of spoiled ones.

Which one to actually pick

Pick them if you want the cheapest credits, you are happy uploading, a 7-day-or-longer retention window suits you, and object separation into a PSD is the whole job. Pick this if the file must never leave your machine, if the text has to come back as text you can retype, if you need editable masks or an ORA for an open-source pipeline, or if you also want the colour-separation side for screen printing. Best of all, run one real file through both: theirs has a free 20-credit trial and our browser tier needs no account. Every figure above is dated — this category moves fast, so check the vendors rather than us.