Huge Microsoft Photos update adds amazing new web search with OCR-extracted text feature and makes AI options easier to access
Microsoft Photos is something of an unsung hero of the Windows app family. It is an astonishingly useful and powerful tool that Microsoft keeps quietly updating on an irregular basis. The latest update has just landed, and it’s a biggie.
We’ve already seen the addition of OCR capabilities to Microsoft Photos so in-image text can be easily copied; this has now been extended to include the option to search the web with text that has been extracted. But this is far from being the only change in the latest update.
Microsoft creates a new reason to buy an AI-powered Copilot+ PC -- image upscaling in Microsoft Photos
Image upscaling has existed as a technology for a number of years, but the results for both videos and still images have proved somewhat mixed. But with the continuous creeping development of AI, Microsoft has just added a preview of super resolution for Copilot+ PCs to its Photos app.
While there are updates and new features for both the Windows 10 and Windows 11 versions of Microsoft Photos, image upscaling is only available to Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs with Windows 11, version 24H2 and higher in the Canary, Dev, and Release Preview Channels. A powerful new OCR feature is available to everyone, however.