Welcome to today’s Powerful Websites.

In this issue: cleanup.pictures (Design), stirlingpdf.io (Productivity), typelit.io (Education).

Have feedback? Just reply. Let’s get into it.

cleanup.pictures (website, watch demo)

Paint over anything in a photo and AI removes it. People, text, watermarks, random objects in the background. The AI fills in what was behind it like it was never there. No layers, no clone stamp, no tutorials. Just paint and done.

Search interest grew 23% year-over-year, climbing steadily from 60 to 74 with a peak of 96 in August. The growth tracks AI image editing going mainstream. Object removal used to be a Photoshop skill that took years to learn. Now it’s a 30-second paint-and-click. Real estate photographers clean up messy rooms. E-commerce sellers remove distracting backgrounds. Everyone else removes that stranger who walked into their vacation photo.

What’s next: cleanup.pictures is part of the AI Photo Editing trend. Basic removal is becoming commoditized, but the ClipDrop suite integration (owned by Stability AI) gives it a broader toolset. Competition is heating up from mobile-first tools like Photoroom and SnapEdit, plus Adobe’s own AI features rolling into Photoshop.

Photoroom, SnapEdit, Inpaint, and IOPaint (open source) are other tools in this space.

stirlingpdf.io (website, watch demo)

Open-source PDF tool that does everything Adobe Acrobat does. Merge, split, convert, compress, OCR, watermark, sign. The difference: it’s free, and you can run it on your own computer so your documents never touch someone else’s server.

Search interest grew 58% year-over-year, jumping from 19 to 30 with a massive spike to 63 in June. That spike lines up with growing awareness of data privacy in cloud tools. Every time you upload a contract or financial document to an online PDF tool, you’re trusting a third party with sensitive data. Stirling PDF removes that problem entirely. With 40,000+ GitHub stars, it’s one of the most popular self-hosted tools out there.

What’s next: stirlingpdf.io is part of the Self-Hosted Tools trend. Companies and individuals are realizing that convenience shouldn’t mean giving up control of sensitive data. PDF manipulation involves contracts, tax forms, medical records. Running this locally is a no-brainer.

ILovePDF, SmallPDF, and PDF24 are other tools in this space (though all cloud-based).

typelit.io (website, watch demo)

Instead of typing random sentences to practice, you retype entire classic books. Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby. You get faster at typing and you actually read something good. Track your WPM, watch your progress through each book, and build the habit.

Search interest grew 171% year-over-year, climbing from near-zero to 46. That’s the kind of growth you see when a tool finds its niche perfectly. Every other typing tool gives you random words or generic sentences. TypeLit flipped the concept: if you’re going to spend time practicing, you might as well be reading Hemingway. Students use it for assigned reading. Writers use it to absorb prose style. Everyone else uses it because typing “Call me Ishmael” is more interesting than typing “the quick brown fox.”

What’s next: typelit.io is part of the Productive Practice trend. People want tools that combine skill-building with something meaningful. Why do reps on nonsense when you can do reps on literature?

TypingClub, Keybr, and MonkeyType are other tools in this space.

All of these websites have been added to the Powerful Websites Spreadsheet.

Reply and let me know what you thought.

Rj