Microsoft's AI-Powered Super Resolution Feature for Windows 11 Photos App Faces Rollout Challenges

Microsoft seems to have botched the rollout of a nifty AI feature for Windows 11's Photos app

Microsoft's new super resolution ability - which was recently applied (in preview) to the Photos app in Windows 11 - has suffered from a seemingly botched rollout by the software giant. This is a new AI ability - one for Copilot+ PCs, as it requires a beefy NPU for acceleration - and it allows for enhancing or enlarging images, by a factor of up to 8x. The idea is you can blow up a photo for a large print, or improve very low quality photos to something a bit sharper and more palatable. This was supposed to be in testing for Windows Insiders, but as leaker PhantomOfEarth reports, super resolution was appearing on some devices that it wasn't supposed to be on. Presumably, that means non-Copilot+ PCs, rather than the feature coming to users outside of the Windows Insider programme. At any rate, last week, Microsoft issued an update to say: "We investigated and fixed an issue where super resolution was appearing on PCs it shouldn't be. The fix is rolling out now." However, according to PhantomOfEarth, this fix seems to have banished the super resolution feature from Photos on devices where it is supposed to be Copilot+ PCs, and a number of folks with supported PCs no longer have the ability. Whatever Microsoft has changed with the deployment of super resolution appears to have overcompensated, by the sounds of things. Hopefully this will be a problem that can be resolved soon enough, but this feature has certainly got off on the wrong foot.

Microsoft Photos adds a tool to enhance your low-quality pictures - but there's a catch

Now available in preview, a super resolution mode uses AI to improve and enlarge your images. Here's how to access it. Trying to enhance a bad photo is always a challenge. Maybe you snapped a blurry or grainy picture that needs sharpening. Or maybe you've scanned a batch of old print photos that you now want to salvage. Whatever the reason, Microsoft Photos now comes with a new tool aimed at improving those low-quality images. Announced on Tuesday, the new version of Microsoft Photos in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview comes with an option called super resolution. Available to all Windows Insiders, the feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance and enlarge an image up to eight times the size of the original. Also: Canva introduces new Dream Lab featuring Leonardo.ai image generation Microsoft is touting super resolution as an ideal way to fix low-quality photos, beef up photos that you want to print or view on a large display, and tightly crop images without sacrificing resolution. Is there a downside? Of course. To use this new trick, you'll need a Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PC. That's because super resolution taps into the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) on these computers to enhance your photos directly on your device. You'll also want to make sure you have the latest versions of the Windows 11 Insider Preview and Microsoft Photos. However, I was initially able to access and use super resolution on three different non-Copilot+ PC, two with Windows 11 23H2 and one with Win 11 22H2. How could that be? Chalk it up to a glitch on Microsoft's part. A spokesperson for the company told me that there was an issue in which super resolution was appearing on PCs that it shouldn't be. Aware of the mistake, Microsoft has since "fixed" the Photos app to remove the feature from unsupported PCs. Also: Microsoft blocks Windows 11 24H2 update for some PCs following bug onslaught In the short time that super resolution was accessible to all Windows 11 users, I tested it by opening an image in the Photos app and selecting the Edit button. I clicked the last icon on the top toolbar and then kicked off super-resolution mode. From there, I increased the resolution in increments of 1, all the way, up to 8. The app displayed the original and new resolution as AI enhanced the photo. After several minutes of processing, I was shown the before and after preview of the image. I was then able to apply the changes to my photo. In my testing, the results from super-resolution were underwhelming. Blurry or grainy photos didn't look any better after the tool performed its AI-powered tricks. I couldn't see any major differences when comparing the original photos to the resized ones -- whether on a larger screen or in print format. ZDNET editor Kyle Kucharski tried super resolution on a Copilot+ PC and also found that it didn't work very well, speculating that it might be more useful on images that are already relatively high-resolution. That's too bad because we could all use a good photo tool to fix and revitalize low-quality and old images Your mileage may vary depending on the quality and other attributes of the photos you try to enhance. Since super resolution ran perfectly fine on a non-Copilot+PC, at least for a short time, it may become available for all Windows 11 users at some point. However, I'll stick to Adobe Photoshop Elements as my go-to photo editor. Also: How to upgrade your 'incompatible' Windows 10 PC to Windows 11: Two ways And there's more. Microsoft has added another feature to its Photos app that doesn't require a Copilot+ PC. Also available in the Windows 11 Insider Preview, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can detect text in your photos, screenshots, and other images. You can then copy all or part of the text to the clipboard for use in another apps or documents. The new OCR tool can identify text in more than 160 languages. To access the super resolution tool on a Copilot+ PC or the OCR on any Windows 11 PC, make sure you're a member of Microsoft's Windows Insider Program. Go to Settings, select Windows Update, and download the latest updates. To grab the newest version of Microsoft Photos, open the Microsoft Store app, click the Downloads icon, and then download the latest updates for all your Microsoft Store apps.

Microsoft Photos can now upscale and enhance images using AI

The exciting AI-driven image enhancement feature will only be available on Copilot+ PCs. According to yesterday's Windows blog post, the Microsoft Photos app is now being updated with the new Super Resolution feature that can enlarge and improve the quality of low-resolution images using AI. With Super Resolution, you'll be able to increase the resolution of a photo up to eight times its original size. It's a great way to clean up old pictures from outdated digital cameras and to upscale images for creative or editorial purposes. It's one of the more exciting features that have been planned as part of Microsoft's Windows 11 AI roadmap. Because Super Resolution employs AI technology, the feature is only being made available to Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. (Copilot+ PCs are next-gen AI PCs with a special component called an NPU, which handles all AI processing and frees up the CPU and GPU for other uses.) It's unclear whether Super Resolution will eventually come to non-Copilot+ PCs in the future, but most likely not. Super Resolution is currently only available to Windows Insiders on Windows 11 across all the Insider Channels. There's no word yet as to when it will arrive on the stable version of Windows 11. This update to Microsoft Photos also brings OCR support (the ability to copy text from an image to your clipboard) to both Windows !0 and 11, usability enhancements to the Zoom feature, and single-click opening of images from File Explorer's Gallery.

Microsoft Photos app gets AI super resolution upscaling in Windows Insider build

TL;DR: Super Resolution upscaling is now available on all Windows 11 24H2 Insider Channels for Copilot+ PCs powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. This feature allows users to increase an image's resolution by up to eight times while maintaining clarity. Unfortunately Snapdragon-based PCs represent a small fraction of Windows users, so the feature will be sparingly used. Microsoft will say it's because it relies on the NPU, but most modern laptops and desktop PCs carry plenty of power to handle upscaling anyway. For some time, certain smartphones have offered locally-processed AI applications to edit and enhance photos, and with the introduction of Snapdragon X Elite SoCs and other NPU-enhanced processors, Microsoft has gradually started bringing similar functionality to bundled Windows apps like Paint and Photos. The latest feature to enter testing is Super Resolution upscaling. Upscaling is useful for tasks such as cropping images while retaining high resolution, enhancing low-quality photos, zooming in without pixelation, or preparing pictures for large screens and prints. To enable Super Resolution, click the icon on the far right of the top row in version 2024.11100.17007.0 of the Photos app. The feature leverages NPUs to handle generative AI tasks. Although it currently supports only Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs, it is expected to extend to Intel Core 200 and AMD Ryzen AI 300 CPUs in the future. The Insider update also introduces OCR support to the Photos app. The image viewer can now recognize text in over 160 languages, enabling users to select and copy text to the clipboard. Once text is detected, simply click the OCR icon at the bottom of the window to activate the feature. Microsoft has also introduced several smaller changes. Users can now optionally open images with a single click instead of a double click, and large images will automatically resize to fit the window by default. The Image Creator and Restyle Image features have received bug fixes, too. Beta testers can provide feedback by accessing the Feedback Hub using the Windows + F keys under Apps > Photos. A GenAI-based eraser for the Photos app entered testing earlier this year, and Insiders recently gained access to fill and erase functionality in Microsoft Paint. Photoshop and other Adobe apps have been advertising extensive new AI editing features over the past few months, but Paint will make some of the basics available without a subscription. When the public rollout begins in November, they will be available on Snapdragon, Intel, and AMD Copilot+ PCs. Generative AI will also soon assist users in searching for photos based on text prompts. To encourage exploration of this technology, a feature called "Click to Do" will offer editing suggestions for images, text, and websites detected onscreen.