Windows 10 Redstone will feature intelligent search in Photos app

Windows 10 ships with a Photos app which replaced the Windows Photo Viewer and Photo Gallery. Photos offers very basic functionality to view images from the user's local drive or from the OneDrive cloud storage. Microsoft is finally going to make a small amount of features which their earlier apps had. More features will land in the Photos app with the Redstone update.
With the Redstone update, Microsoft plans to add intelligent search functionality to the Photos app. If you are using the OneDrive website or are familiar with the Photo Gallery app from the Windows (Live) Essentials suite, you might have seen this feature in action. The intelligent search feature allows users to search photos based on the people's faces which are recognized by the app and the places where the photos were taken based on geotagging information. It will also be able to finally read customized tags directly.

According to WinBeta, the web site which refers to an internal source at Microsoft, Photos will get the following behavior:

... the Photos app will automatically scan photos for faces, as well as metadata for locations, then categorize them automatically for easy viewing. You will be able to "teach" the Photos app who a specific person is so it can automatically categorize them into a folder/album that is dedicated to them.

This is definitely an improvement for people who have a huge collection of photos and use the Photos app to view them. Of course, desktop apps like Photo Gallery continue to have much more functionality.

There will also be an update to editing options available in the Photos app, bringing the ability to draw directly onto a photo, and the addition of more filters and effects. The same feature should be added to Windows 10 Mobile as well.

It is not known yet when exactly these features will come to the Photos app. The Redstone update is known to consist of two parts. While the first wave should be released this October, the second wave is expected only in 2017 (via Winbeta).

Support us

Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options: