Microsoft has announced some major upcoming changes to the Windows Photos app in Windows 11. You might tend to think of that app as something for personal use (like organizing vacation photos), not a business tool. But with the updates coming soon to the app, it could be time to reconsider.
If you work with photos at all in your workflows, even in seemingly small ways, Windows Photos might have something for you in the next update. Here’s what’s on the way.
Biggest New Feature: Visual Search with Bing
Microsoft is about to infuse its desktop photos app with the power of its Bing AI, giving you the ability to conduct what it calls Visual Searches.
Visual Search looks like a version of something called a reverse image search, possibly with other enhancements as well.
So what’s a reverse image search? It’s where you use an image you already have as the “search term”. Imagine going to Google.com or Bing.com to ask a question or search for “best ergonomic keyboard” — but instead of giving your search engine a text prompt, you show it a picture.
Sounds kind of funky if you’ve never used it before. But it’s a sneaky powerful addition to Windows. Now you can perform a reverse image search directly in Windows Photos, which enables you to do a bunch of different things:
- Find other similar photos on your device, in the cloud, or on the internet
- Find other photos of a specific product or item
- Find information about the object in your photo
- Learn where in the world the photo was taken
- Learn information about that location i
- Learn where an image came from (if you’re searching something well-known)
Some businesses (like those with an eCommerce store) could even use reverse photo searches to identify competitors selling the same or similar products, where you could then compare pricing and evaluate what the competitor is doing well in terms of page design, SEO, and more.
Why Now?
Reverse image search has been around for a few years, so why is Microsoft just now embedding it into Windows? Well, reverse image searching is computation-heavy: it’s a lot more complex for a computer to parse an image than a simple text phrase. Previous generations of PCs didn’t have the oomph to do this kind of calculation on-device, and providing reverse image search via the cloud was at least a little bit costly.
But now that we’re in the middle of an AI boom, Microsoft has AI models that can do this much more efficiently. Some of them can even run locally on your PC. And that’s why Visual Search with Bing is coming soon: the technology and the hardware have evolved to make it possible.
Other Updates to Windows Photos
Microsoft announced several other updates that might be useful in your business and personal workflows. We’ll move through these a bit faster.
Quick-access editing tool
Microsoft is changing the way its editing tools are presented within the Windows Photos app. Soon you’ll see a quick-access editing panel within the app, right alongside the photo that you’re viewing. This will make it easier to edit your photos without digging through layers upon layers of menus.
iCloud sync
There are millions of people who use Windows PCs (at work, home, or both) alongside their Apple iPhones. Needless to say, the two don’t always get along perfectly. But in this next update, Microsoft is adding the ability to sync photos with your Apple iCloud account (which is the default way your iPhone photos are stored in the cloud). It’s a small quality-of-life change, but it could make a big difference for iPhone users.
All these changes are coming to the WIndows 11 version of Microsoft Photos soon. Still running Windows 10 for work? It’s time to upgrade — our team can guide you through the process. Reach out today!