Unlock Your Creativity with Microsoft Photo Editors

When it comes to photo editing software, Photoshop or Lightroom may come to mind. Indeed, Adobe dominates the field of image processing and editing. However, these professional tools may not always be your perfect choice. If you just need some simple edits or enhancements, consider a Microsoft photo editor.

This guide mainly introduces the current Microsoft photo editing applications to help you decide which application to use. Additionally, you’ll briefly learn about the discontinued photo editors from Microsoft.

Current Microsoft Photo Editors

First, let’s take a look at Microsoft’s current photo editing software built into Windows.

#1 Microsoft Photos

The Microsoft Photos app is the default image and video viewing application built into Windows 11 and 10. It’s designed to be a one-stop solution for organizing your images, from quick viewing to simple edits.

To align with the modern Windows 11 design, the Photos app has evolved into a more intuitive interface, and it has moved the Legacy Collections, Albums, and Video Editor into Microsoft Photos Legacy.

Key Editing Features

Photos is Microsoft’s primary photo editor built into Windows 11 and 10, and it provides powerful editing features.

Crop

The photo app allows you to freely crop any part of an image, from the top, right, bottom, or left. Additionally, it enables you to crop images with a fixed aspect ratio, such as 1:1, 16:9, 9:16, 4:5, 2:3, 4:3, and more. Therefore, you can easily make your photo suitable for any platform.

Furthermore, you can rotate and flip an image in the app with one click.

Adjustment

To help you enhance the overlay quality of a picture, the Photos app provides various adjustment tools for light and color, such as brightness, saturation, highlights, shadows, warmth, sharpness, and more.

Filter

This Microsoft photo editor also comes with multiple filters to enhance your photos. With one click, you can give your image a different look.

Markup

Whether you want to freely draw on the image or add an arrow, the markup tool can meet your needs. It also lets you change the size and color of the pen.

AI Erase & Background

Powered by AI, the Photos app also empowers you to remove any area or object from a photo and automatically fill in the removed area. It can use AI to detect and remove the background, and then you can replace it with a solid color. Besides, it lets you blur the entire image background.

The Microsoft Photos app strikes an excellent balance between simplicity and power, making it perfect for the average user who wants to edit images but doesn’t need a professional program like Adobe Photoshop.

#2 Microsoft Paint

Microsoft Paint is a simple graphics editing program that has been included with every version of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It has a straightforward interface, and simplicity is its biggest characteristic.

Paint is not intended for professional photo editing. Instead, it’s designed for quick tasks like:

• Editing screenshots.
• Adding text and arrows to images.
• Resizing and cropping photos.
• Rotating or flipping images.
• Adding strokes to the photo.
• Drawing different shapes on the image.

While Microsoft Paint is not as powerful as Photoshop, it remains a great Microsoft photo editor. It is still one of the world’s best image editing applications due to its ease of use and intuitive design.

#3 Microsoft Designer

Designer is a powerful Microsoft AI photo editor. Its core function is a powerful AI image generator that can convert text to images of different sizes. Additionally, it can also generate icons, wallpapers, banners, emojis, and more from text.

In addition to the primary AI-powered image generation feature, Designer is also capable of editing images with AI, such as background removal, upscaling, object removal, auto enhancement, and cropping.

Furthermore, Designer comes with a vast library of professionally designed templates for every occasion – social media posts, invitations, greeting cards, posters, and more. Its intuitive interface makes customization simple.

Discontinued Microsoft Photo Editors

After the quick review of the current Microsoft photo editors, let’s take a look at the discontinued photo editors from Microsoft.

Microsoft Photo Editor: Replaced in Microsoft Office 2003 by Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

Microsoft Office Picture Manager: Discontinued with the release of Office 2013, replaced by the built-in Photos app.

Windows Live Photo Gallery: A part of Microsoft’s Windows Essentials software suite, unavailable for download since January 10, 2017, and replaced by Photos.

Microsoft PhotoDraw: A vector graphics editor, discontinued. The latest PhotoDraw 2000 is no longer supported.

Conclusion

If you need a Microsoft photo editor for common editing tasks, Photos and Paint are both reliable choices. For AI-powered image features, try Microsoft Designer to unleash your creativity.