flattened text → live type
How to edit text in a flattened image in Photoshop
* Free to use — selecting, editing and every export run in your browser, and nothing is uploaded unless you start a step that says it will: the AI tools, background removal on its sharper engine (an in-browser engine is one click away under the same button), or upscaling a photograph (logos and flat artwork are enlarged on your device). A free account (Google, Apple or an emailed code — no card) is needed to download the finished file, and comes with credits for the server-side tools.
Once a PSD has been flattened — or you were only ever sent a JPG — the text is not text any more. Photoshop has nothing to click: the letters are pixels sitting in the same layer as everything behind them. The usual answers are retyping it over a patched background, or asking the designer for the original.
Get the text backWhy Photoshop cannot just edit it
A type layer stores the string, the font, the size and the colour. Flattening throws all of that away and keeps only the resulting pixels. Nothing in Photoshop can recover it, because there is nothing left to recover — the information was discarded, not hidden. This is why the Type tool will not select a word in a JPG no matter how you click it.
Detect, lift, retype
Text detection reads the lines it can find and writes each back as a real type layer, positioned where it sat, in a close-matched face. The original pixels are erased from the layer underneath and the background behind them rebuilt — over sky, a gradient or a flat wall that fill is free and leaves no ghost; only text sitting on real photographic texture needs the server fill. Open the exported PSD in Photoshop and the words are live: click, retype, restyle.
The font will be close, not identical
Identifying a typeface from rasterised letters is its own hard problem, and a confidently wrong guess is worse than an honest one. Each line is classified and mapped to a close standard face you already have installed, and the PSD carries the PostScript name so you can swap it in one step if you know the real one.
Where it works best
Posters, banners, social graphics, slides, screenshots and product labels come back cleanly. Ornate script, heavily stylised logotypes and very small dense body copy are the honest hard cases — a monogram with intertwined letters is usually better grabbed as an object than retyped, and an automatic erase there is harder to undo than doing it by hand — so check those before erasing.
Frequently asked
Will it match my font exactly?
It maps to a close standard face rather than guessing precisely. The PSD carries the name so you can substitute the real one in a click if you know it.
What happens to the background behind the text?
It is rebuilt. Over smooth areas the fill is free, in-browser and ghost-free; only text over photographic texture uses the paid server fill, and you are told which lines those are before anything is spent.
Does this work on a JPG?
Yes. JPG, PNG or WebP — anything flat. The output is a layered PSD with live type.
Keep reading
Make flattened text editableSeparate text from an imageRelated
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