A Photoshop Alternative for Windows Is Now Really Good and Free
Windows has a somewhat spotty history of viewing and editing photos, but the latest Photos app is slowly becoming really useful. It may not be a full-blown alternative to Photoshop , but it now offers a lot of basic editing features and even some generative AI to help your images look their best.
Photos combines a photo viewer and a photo editor, so the first task the program does when you download it is to catalog all the images you have on your system. Use the gear icon at the top to change the photo viewer configuration and the buttons above the images to change the order in which they appear.
When you’re ready to start editing, double-click any image in your library. This will open a larger view with links to OneDrive and Microsoft Designer, but we’re interested in the built-in editing tools – click the Edit button (top left corner).
Basic editing tools
The screen you’ll see first is for cropping and rotating. Click and drag the handles in the corner of the selected image to change how it is cropped (hold down Shift to maintain the aspect ratio), or click and drag the degrees slider to change the angle. At the bottom there are buttons for rotating 90 degrees, flipping horizontally and vertically, and cropping to a specific aspect ratio (such as 4:3 or 16:9).
At any point during editing, you can click the Undo button (back arrow, top left) to go back a step, or the Reset button to go back to the beginning—a reliable safety net if you’re worried about ruining a favorite photo. Meanwhile, your saving options are in the top right corner: you can overwrite an existing image, save a new image, or copy an image to the clipboard.
The icons at the top (which have text labels if the app window is large enough) will take you to other parts of the program: Crop , Adjust , Filter , Markup , Erase , and Background . Any changes you make in one panel will be saved when you move to other panels, but will not be saved to disk until you save the file.
Switch to the Adjust screen and you’ll see a familiar row of sliders covering attributes like Brightness , Exposure, and Contrast . Make changes to any of these sliders and the results will appear immediately. For example, increase the Shadows value to see more detail in the dark areas of the image, or decrease the Highlights value to see more definition in brighter areas.
You also have color-related sliders, so you can also adjust image saturation , warmth , hue , and sharpness . For more precise control of any of these sliders, click the slider you want to adjust, then use the arrow keys on your keyboard (left and right or up and down) to change the values.
Advanced editing tools
Beyond the basic features, there’s a lot more you can do with your images in Windows Photos. The Filter screen has a variety of preset filters you can apply to your image, just like the original Instagram, from Punch to Vintage . There’s also an Auto Enhance button, which lets Photos take full advantage of its ability to adjust the image’s characteristics to make it look its best.
The next tab is Markup , which allows you to write all over the selected image using the various pens and markers you’ll find underneath the image (tap and hold on any of the pen icons to change the line thickness and color). It’s not the most sophisticated tool, but it allows you to quickly annotate images (like screenshots).
There’s also an Erase screen where you can remove objects from a photo using generative AI. Draw on the part of the image you want to remove, and the tool does the rest, drawing a new background based on surrounding pixels and other visual cues. Disable the Auto Apply button to gain more control over the selection mask and removal application.
The last screen is “Background” . Photos will try to highlight the subject and people in the foreground, and then you can apply blur to the background or remove it entirely. If the background isn’t recognized well enough automatically, turn on the Background Brush option and you’ll be able to make minor changes.
Without offering any selection tools, healing brushes, or layer editing, Photos covers most of the adjustments most people will want to do with their images, without any additional downloads or fees after installing Windows. If you want something other than Adobe’s leading software on the market, try our other Photoshop alternatives .