$\"Microsoft$ <\/p>\n

Image: Mark Hachman \/ IDG<\/span>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Many of us are simply accustomed to using the Photos app within Windows 10 and 11 to review images captured by our phones. But the Photos app is actually the new<\/em> Photos app \u2014 and, arguably, the old version is still better.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Microsoft seems to have recognized this. What\u2019s known as still resides within the Windows Store, and there\u2019s one good reason that you might still prefer it over the latest version: its superior content search capabilities.<\/p>\n

One of the problems with snapping photos we take is that we tend to take the photo, save it or post it on social media, and then forget about it. But not always. Sometimes you want to pore through old photos \u2014 either to see how your kids have grown up, reminisce about a favorite vacation or event, or simply search for photos that you\u2019ve taken of a particular scene. This is where Photos Legacy\u2026 well, not excels<\/em>, but is far better than the modern Photos app.<\/p>\n

The tipoff is in the search box. In the Legacy Photos app, you can search \u201cpeople, places, or things.\u201d In the modern Photos app, you can search \u201cfile names, types, and dates.\u201d That\u2019s just dumb. Who actually knows the filename of the photo you just took, let alone remember it? And unless it\u2019s a holiday or an anniversary, it\u2019s completely unlikely that you\u2019ll remember when you took the photo, either.<\/p>\n

Photos Legacy applies some amount of AI to actually recognize and catalog photos that you\u2019ve taken. In Photos Legacy, I can type \u201cbeach\u201d in the search box, and unearth photos of the nearby California coastline. I can search for mountains, and Photos will return photos I\u2019ve taken of hills and mountains. It\u2019s not perfect; I took a photo of Lake Tahoe (which is surrounded by mountains) which it couldn\u2019t find, but it did recognize that the place existed in its archive. Both Photos apps will create \u201cMemories\u201d of a given day, but only the Legacy app suggests its own categories, such as \u201cSport\u201d to organize shots of my son\u2019s high-school athletics. I can\u2019t do any of this in what is now the default Photos app.<\/p>\n

I searched for \u201cbeach\u201d in the first image, but Photos Legacy suggested \u201ccoral reef\u201d for these photos shot at the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few years back.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Furthermore, Photos Legacy allows you to turn on and search by face \u2014 including your own, and others. It\u2019s possible that Microsoft leans much more heavily towards privacy than the competition, since this feature is minimal at best. Of all the photos I\u2019ve shot of family and friends, it recognized just two: my own, and the face of a statue downtown that I had used to test some outdoor camera shots. <\/p>\n
Both Photos apps are otherwise almost identical, though the newer app feels somewhat more organized and now can access Apple\u2019s iCloud too. Both Photos apps now include the thumbnails capability that once stunk<\/a> and then has since improved<\/a>, with speed which has now improved dramatically. Both apps allow you to crop, adjust, and even auto-adjust an image based upon the Auto Enhance capability found under the \u201cFilter\u201d tab. Auto Enhance isn\u2019t as necessary as it once was, as cameras now shoot with nearly perfect lighting and exposure under most conditions. It\u2019s still a handy feature to have, nevertheless.<\/p>\n
About the only thing that I don\u2019t like about Photos Legacy is that indexing (not searching) photos you\u2019ve saved to the cloud can take a while, and uses a bit of network bandwidth and data. If you want to use Photos Legacy to index photos, leave it running in the background for a while. <\/p>\n
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Photos Legacy pales in comparison to Google in terms of facial recognition, but at least it works.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Mark Hachman \/ IDG<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Photo recognition and search, then, is what justifies downloading the Photos Legacy app. To be fair, Microsoft still pales in comparison to Google Photos here. Allowing Google Photos to recognize and separate photos by who\u2019s in them creates numerous categories \u2014 even multiple categories for my kids, as they\u2019ve aged and become teenagers. Since my wife pays Google for an account for her small business, I can upload my photos to both the Google and Microsoft clouds to compare. Google wins, every time.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Microsoft\u2019s Photos app does offer some of these automated recognition features \u2014 but it\u2019s not the current Photos app you should be using. Download and launch the instead.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tAuthor: Mark Hachman<\/a>, Senior Editor\t\t<\/h3>\n
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As PCWorld’s senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Read More<\/a>
\n Margarett Ramage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Image: Mark Hachman \/ IDG Many of us are simply accustomed to using the Photos app within Windows 10 and 11 to review images captured by our phones. But the Photos app is actually the new Photos app \u2014 and, arguably, the old version is still better. Fortunately, Microsoft seems to have recognized this. What\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":599376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431,46,23032],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-599375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-photos","8":"category-technology","9":"category-windows"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

\n\t\t\n\t\tAuthor: Mark Hachman<\/a>, Senior Editor\t\t<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nAs PCWorld’s senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n