FREE Photo Editors from the Microsoft Store

Hello everyone! Today I am going to take a look at some photo editors for Windows laptops/desktops from the Microsoft store. So if you don’t know, Windows 10 has an app store much like what you would find on a phone with computer apps. I did look at an editor on their briefly before called Polarr which I got from the Microsoft store in a blog post back in August 2020. I also tried out Photoscape which can be downloaded from the Microsoft store, although I downloaded that editor from the dev site.

Ultimate Photo Editor-

This photo editor says that it was released in 2018 and by a Photo Cool Apps… Cool! I couldn’t leave a link to the developers because oddly enough, the store has no dev share button which is super odd.

Anyways, here is a photo that I opened up into the editor. I can’t help but think that it looks like a mobile editor converted for PC’s. This screenshot has some basic crop options which are kind of nice. Sometimes all I need to do is a simple crop to a photo for Instagram or something.

You can also change the orientation in the next tab.

This next screenshot has some basic editing tools and where I put them for this photo. At this point in editing I actually just saw that button in the upper left corner of the screen and if you hover your mouse above it, you can see the original photo.

Next I had an effect tab and if you have been following the blog for a while you may know that I don’t often add presets. It isn’t that I am against them but more so that I can’t find a ton that I like on small editors. The controls for the effects are kind of weird… I pressed the X and although it did remove the effect, it still shows that the effect is applied.

For the last edit options you have overlays. To be honest, these are not the highest quality overlays I have tried, but they work fine. Again, adjustments were kind of weird for this part.

I thought that was all the editor could do but after clicking the check mark it took me to more edits. As you can see, there are options for framing, stickers, text, and drawing on top. I wrote in the top right-hand corner, and it isn’t anything special. The brush strokes are normal but it works. At this point I did have a watermark appear for the editor. Not surprising for a free editor though.

If you were wondering how much removing the watermark cost, it isn’t terrible. Some other editors from my other post cost upwards of $50 so a $7 purchase really isn’t too bad.

That is just about it for this editor. I removed my “doodle” and exported the photo. Here it is below.

I really wish that I could have a jpg export but it came out as a png. The edits are minimal for this photo, but hopefully you got a feel for these editors capabilities.

Photo Editor | Foto Editor

This next editor is from 2015 and was released by invention.

I opened up the editor and after importing this photo it did take a while to load. After it did open, it came to this editing screen.

First I went to the color adjust place and was very confused. These are color overlays of sorts, and so I am not really going to use them. If you are curious here is a screenshot of what the blue filter does:

Next I went to the Color fix tab which brought me to the types of edits that you would expect: Temp, Tint, Hue, & Saturation. Below I bumped up the temp.

I also bumped up the saturation too.

Next I tried the auto enhance but took it away because it did odd things tot the background. I just added a small bit of sharpness as well as a bit of contrast (as always).

The next one up on the menu converted your photos into sketches, but I didn’t use that.

Next I went to the blending tab and put on a mountain overlay. I thought that it looked pretty cool with this photo.

Next I went to the PIP tab (Picture in Picture). I think this is a pretty cool feature. I won’t use this in the final export for this photo but wanted to mention that I thought it was a pretty nice feature.

For the final section of this editor you can add filters. Again, this won’t be used in my final export but below I added the mirror filter which I thought was kind of cool.

Now for the final export and great news! It exported as a jpg file! Yay!

Anyways, here is the final photo.

I do want to note that these black bars that you see were not appearing before exporting, so it is kind of odd that they were added. Either way I do like this editor more than the first one.

Photo Filter Pro

This last editor is from Mian Rahim-ul-Haq and was released in 2014. The menu in this editor looks very similar to the last editor which is very interesting. Either way, here is the photo that I imported:

The effects did work but the app crashed. First crash of this blog post! The effects were pretty bad to be honest, I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t open, and I did uninstall it. Sorry but, for sure wouldn’t recommend this one.

Conclusion

I am impressed at only having one app crash during this post! In the mobile apps there were a ton of bugs and crashes, but those apps were all under a month old at the time, so it is understandable.

Now, I think that you all enjoy it when I tell you what apps I am planning to keep for use in the future. This time I am only keeping the first app: Ultimate Photo Editor.

I was thinking about keeping the second app as well but decided against it. I want to keep the first app because of simplicity. In my mind, having a simple photo editor is important. If I have a photo that I just need to crop then I don’t open Photoshop Elements 2020 (my main photo editor). I do have Photoshop Express but I don’t really like the cropping tools from Adobe and this editor had very nice cropping tools. The .png export isn’t great but the main reason I export in jpg normally is for better performance on your end. (If you didn’t know, photos in jpg format load faster on sites. This is according to PageSpeedInsights (by Google).)

I really hope that you enjoyed today’s post! As always please like, comment, and follow through wordpress or through my newsletter!

I wrote a second blog post this week over on Medium.com! It is a post specifically about Pixel phones, feel free to visit it here.

-Digital Wonders & Smiles