Thirteen free image tools, most of them on your own device

Why most of these never upload anything

A converter or a resizer does not need a server. Your browser can already decode a JPG, draw it on a canvas and encode it again, which is the whole job. Ten of the thirteen tools here do exactly that, so the file stays on your device and nothing is sent anywhere.

That is not only a privacy point, though it is that too: there is no upload to fail halfway through on a weak connection, no queue to wait in, no size limit imposed by whatever our servers feel like accepting today, and no copy of your photo sitting on someone else's disk. Open the network tab while you use one and you will see there is no request to inspect.

Three of them do use our servers, and we say which: the photo editor, the background remover and Pose Maxing. Those do something a browser cannot do alone.

What free means here, exactly

Eleven of the thirteen are free with no condition attached. No sign up, no trial, no credit, no watermark on the result, and no cap on how many times you use them. They cost us nothing to run, because they run on your machine rather than ours.

Two are different and we would rather say so than let you find out: the background remover and Pose Maxing are credit-backed, and their free runs are promotions that can be switched off. When a promotion is off, the page says so before you upload anything.

Which one you actually want

• Something will not accept your file: a converter. HEIC is what an iPhone saves by default and many sites reject it; WebP is what a lot of websites serve and many apps reject it.
• An upload is refused for being too large: the compressor first, then the resizer if it is still too big. Compressing keeps the dimensions and lowers the quality; resizing lowers the dimensions.
• A form wants an exact size, or a profile wants a square: the resizer for pixels, the crop tool for a ratio like 1:1, 4:5 or 9:16.
• You need to hide a face, a number plate or an address before sharing: the blur tool.
• The photo is sideways or the horizon is tilted: rotate and flip.
• You want a caption or a title on the image itself: add text.
• You have several photos and want one picture: the collage maker.

What these tools do not do

None of them make your photos look like someone else. There is no beautifying, no face slimming, no skin smoothing and no filter that quietly changes what you look like. A resizer resizes. A converter converts.

That is also the line the rest of CMeIn holds. The photos we generate are meant to look like you on an ordinary day, not like an idealised version of you, which is the whole reason people say a photo looks like them and not like a stranger wearing their face.

Common questions