In case you missed AI in everyday experiences on your Windows 11 PC, the Photos app will soon have an option to expand a photo beyond its borders, rotate it without cropping out any part of the image, change a selected object by typing what you want, and erase things you don’t want in the shot. All of it is powered by Adobe, not Microsoft, if that makes you feel any better.
Of course, this may be useful to many users, but Adobe has a history (and present) of constant upsells. With the new update coming to Photos, Windows Latest understands that you’ll be able to send a photo from Photo Viewer to Adobe Express, drop it into a template, and continue the design there. The preview starts rolling out to Windows Insiders in December.
I’ve seen how Microsoft’s last big Adobe partnership turned out. Edge removed its built-in PDF engine in favour of Adobe’s Acrobat engine in 2023, and it comes with an Edit with Acrobat button that asks to start a free trial. So, is Microsoft improving Photos, or is it giving Adobe another storefront inside Windows 11?
Microsoft finally made the Windows 11 Photos app good, and then Adobe showed up
On October 15, Giorgio Sardo, Vice President of Microsoft Store and Windows Apps, announced a new Photos experience with a Gallery for your PC, OneDrive and iCloud photos, a native Editor that launches 25% faster, and a Viewer that opens HEIC images up to 30% faster. The Editor also got better object removal, Relight on every Windows 11 PC, and HDR, HEIC and WebP editing. This was great news that made me hopeful.
The old Photos app is now called Photo Viewer, and over the summer, Microsoft even removed the Designer, Clipchamp and OneDrive buttons that cluttered its toolbar. Again, great going.
I use the AI erase in Photos almost every day, so I was pretty pumped. The design is also pretty good that people on X asked if Microsoft ported the new Photos from macOS, and truth be told, I don’t mind the Apple inspiration as long as it still looks like a Windows app.
And now, less than a month later, Adobe announced it would power some of the new editing tools.
Adobe Express in Photos sounds useful, but I’ve seen this play out in Edge
In the screenshot Adobe shared, Expand is an option under Crop > Aspect ratio in the Photos Editor, and a “Powered by Adobe” label shows up right next to the Expand and Cancel buttons.
Adobe’s announcement also says you’ll be able to “preview your photo in a personalized template before continuing your design in Adobe Express.” So, Photos is getting a doorway to Adobe Express along with the editing tools. Sardo called them “Adobe-powered AI editing experiences in Microsoft Photos” in his X post, and signed off with “More to come soon.” Well, that last bit is what worries me.
Microsoft and Adobe put the Acrobat PDF engine inside Edge in February 2023. The reader was free (fortunately), but editing text and images, converting PDFs and combining files need an Acrobat subscription. If you open a PDF in Edge and click “Edit with Acrobat,” you’ll see a “Do more with your PDFs” panel showing Convert PDF and Merge files as Premium, with a big blue “Start 7-day free trial” button.
But I’m very sure that I will not subscribe to Adobe Acrobat, so can I turn off the button? Nope.
There is some light at the end of this tunnel, though, as Edge is getting its own PDF merger in January 2027, and you wouldn’t need Adobe Acrobat for it. Funny that Microsoft can build such tools when they want to.
Microsoft already has its own image AI, so why does Photos need Adobe?
On November 10, the day Adobe announced the Photos partnership, Jordi Ribas, who heads Search at Microsoft, posted on X that MAI-Image-2.6 Flash is now the default model in Bing Image Creator. The claim is that it generates images 2.8x faster than GPT-Image-2-Medium with 72% greater efficiency. Microsoft also says MAI-Image-2.6 supports image editing as well as generation. These numbers would make you believe that Microsoft would want to add it to more of their products.
In fact, the Photos app already has Microsoft’s AI. Restyle Image and Image Creator are Copilot+ PC exclusives in the app (I never liked the quality from these, though). Anyway, Adobe’s feature list includes object removal, which Microsoft spent engineering resources to upgrade their version in the Editor just weeks ago.
Bing Image Creator is a different product, and the important thing is that we don’t know if MAI-Image can expand photos as well as Adobe. Still, after more than a year of building their own image models, Microsoft should explain what Windows users gain from Adobe’s version.
I want a better Photos app, not another subscription funnel
Adobe Express does have a free plan with basic editing tools and templates, while Premium adds premium templates and 250 generative credits a month. So, there’s no sign of a paywall in Photos yet. But neither company has said whether you’ll need an Adobe account, which templates will be free, or how many trial prompts you’ll see.
I’ve said this many times before: Windows is not a free OS. It doesn’t need more upsells. I understand that companies need to support each other to get back some of the money they spent for AI development, but giving a bad experience to customers will only push them to a competitor.
Speaking of which, Apple, which took plenty of heat for Siri’s capabilities (or the lack of it), shipped Clean Up, Extend and Spatial Reframing in Photos for iOS 27 and macOS 27 as part of Apple Intelligence, with no mention of a third-party design app, even when they used Google’s Gemini models.
There is some positive news, though. Adobe’s MAX announcement mentioned optimized Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects and Substance 3D Painter (beta) to high-performance Arm PCs like the Surface Laptop Ultra. I know a many Windows on Arm users who have been waiting for 2 years for Adobe to do this.
Earlier this year, Microsoft VP Scott Hanselman said a “calmer and more chill OS with fewer upsells” is the goal. Well, I am not calm. Photos finally got some good things going for it, but now it’s like three steps forward and one step back.
