JPEG XL Archives

Winsage

March 27, 2025

Windows Photos gets revamped with powerful AI features and smarter tools

Microsoft has updated its Photos app for Windows Insiders, integrating AI features, including the Copilot assistant. This update introduces a dedicated button for accessing Copilot, which offers personalized photography editing tips and image insights. Users can upload images to receive AI-generated feedback, although Copilot does not yet edit photos. The app now includes enhanced optical character recognition with a "Search in Web" option, allowing users to highlight text in images and search online. New shortcuts in File Explorer enable users to access AI editing tools easily. The "Visual Search with Bing" tool allows exploration of similar images and related products. The updated Gallery View supports smarter folder navigation, and JPEG XL support improves image quality and compression. Microsoft has also addressed bugs affecting AI features and made general performance improvements.

Winsage

March 26, 2025

Windows Photos adds fancy editing features from other Microsoft apps

Microsoft is updating its Windows Photos app with features from its Designer application in version 2025.11030.20006.0. The app will include AI-powered editing tools, such as image touch-ups, background removal, and photo upscaling, particularly for users with Copilot+ PCs that have a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). A new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature will enable users to import documents and extract text from images, similar to Office Lens. The integration of Designer's creative elements will allow users to create designs using existing images for greeting cards and other layouts. Users will be able to access the "Create with Designer" feature by right-clicking on photos in File Explorer. Additionally, the app will automatically display photos from subfolders in Gallery mode and will support JPEG XL (JXL) file formats.

Winsage

March 3, 2025

Microsoft adds JPEG XL support to Windows 11 with a quick download

Windows 11 users can enhance image handling with the JPEG XL image extension, available for download from the Microsoft Store. This feature requires Windows 11 version 24H2 and allows users to view and save images in the .jxl format. The extension also enables conversion of existing JPEG files to the lossless JPEG XL format, reducing file sizes while preserving image quality, and allows reverting JPEG XL files back to the original JPEG format. JPEG XL offers advantages over traditional JPEG, including improved compression efficiency, support for a broad color scale (32 bits), high bit depth, dynamic range, animation, alpha channels, layers, thumbnails, and both lossless and progressive coding. It is designed for optimal display across various devices and is suitable for web content and professional photography. The codec is efficient for computational processing without needing additional hardware acceleration, benefiting mobile devices.