Microsoft is releasing a major update to its Photos app for users in the Windows Insider program. This update brings many improvements aimed at making it easier to manage, edit, and search for images, but the one that stands out is the Copilot addition.
There is a new Copilot button in the Photos app. This button gives users direct access to AI features, which most Windows users should be used to by now. This Copilot integration gives Photo Editing Tips for improving images, Image Insights that share interesting details about photos, and Framing Suggestions to assist in better composition.
It doesn’t seem like the Copilot actively changes the photo that it is being asked about. At this point, it’s just the AI looking at the picture, which is similar to adding the photo to a chatbot conversation and asking the AI about it. Microsoft didn’t release any information on where it will go from here, but it seems like another way to accidentally click Copilot when using your PC.
This update is currently only available to Insiders on Windows 11 across all channels and to Windows 10 users in the Release Preview Channel. The update includes several important improvements focused on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, better organization of galleries, and improvements in how the app performs.
One of the standout features of this update is the major upgrade to the app’s OCR capabilities. Currently supporting over 160 languages, the OCR feature includes a new option called “Search in Web.” This allows users to highlight text extracted from an image using the Scan Text button. Apple’s Preview image viewer on Mac has offered a similar feature for a long time, so it’s great to see Microsoft finally catch up.
The app then conducts a web search for related information, which makes it much easier to gather information from documents, notes, and other text within images. This is pretty advanced if it works the way it sounds. Being able to scan a document on a table and see where it is from is pretty interesting, but it could also just scan the image and give information on the features around the image, like historical locations and things like that.
There will also be new shortcuts that can be accessed directly within File Explorer. Users can right-click on images using various AI editing tools without needing to open apps like Photoshop. The “Create with Designer” option lets users add rich text, change the layout by selecting objects, and improve colors using the color pop feature, and an “Erase Object” shortcut that lets users remove parts of images they don’t like.
One tool that stood out to me was “Visual Search with Bing,” which basically lets users find similar images and related products from File Explorer all at once. That’s an interesting way to push more Bing usage, but I’d only press it through a misclick.
The Gallery view of the Photos app has also been significantly improved by adding a “Show subfolders” option. This feature lets users view images and videos in subfolders without leaving the Gallery, making browsing easier. Content previously hidden in subfolders is now more manageable, enhancing navigation and organization.
In addition to these major features, the update also adds a few smaller things. For example, the Photos app now supports JPEG XL files, a less-popular but still common image format. Bug fixes have also been applied to the Image Creator and Restyle Image features for Copilot+ PCs, which improves the overall performance and quality.
While there are a lot of cool features in this update, like the Photoshop-worthy additions, the Copilot button feels like the start of something more. It seems weird to have Copilot there just to give advice and not help in some tangible way. However, this matches the many Copilot additions, like Notepad, so this could just be a way to expand the Copilot ecosystem.
Source: Microsoft
