Microsoft Designer, a masterpiece in artificial intelligence, is hands-on

Microsoft Designer, a visual art tool for visual art design, is now available. Should You can try it. It is simply one the best consumer apps Microsoft ever made, following the lead of Clipchamp.

Why use the designer There are two reasons why you should use the designer: AI art, and templates. Designer allows you to combine an infinite amount of AI art with intelligently suggested templates. This makes it possible to create finished projects in a matter of seconds.

Microsoft announced Microsoft DesignerIt was released in October and is currently only available to a select group of preview users. PCWorld was granted access through preview codes shared via Twitter. After downloading your first build, you will receive a code for three additional Designer licences that you can share with anyone you wish. Microsoft Designer will eventually join Microsoft 365. However it is clear that Microsoft Edge’s Image Creator will share artistic AI features with Microsoft Designer.

It’s quite interesting to see that the designer is very cool. NotAt least, for now, an enterprise tool. Preview codes that are shared with school or institution accounts won’t work. Instead, only consumer versions of Microsoft accounts can use Microsoft Designer, which feels very much in line with the overall theme — it’s a consumer tool, first and foremost.

In fact, the designer is a complement to the other. Microsoft Clipchamp, the amazing web-based video editorLaunched earlier this year. Microsoft bought Clipchamp. It’s not clear from where Designer’s resources came. The user interface and design of Clipchamp are very similar, but with a little more polish. Everything will look the same if you’ve just set up Windows 11 on your new PC. Clipchamp’s web-based nature means that the app has some wrinkles, as our Clipchamp review revealed. The designer tabs that I had opened generated an error message when they were reopened the next morning. I had to reload them. My project was still intact.

How to use Microsoft Designer

You’ll likely be able to create a professional-looking photograph in just a few minutes. The designer doesn’t waste any time: after a quick animation in Designer.microsoft.comThe designer then gets to work. There are three main entry points: what you want the designer to say, what they want to show, or what they want to create.

Designers shine in the way they use your cues to bring your design to life. Type “Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary” in the text Add text to the title of your designEnter your details and the designer will create several anniversary cards in a matter of seconds. You’ll find about a dozen designs with pizza backgrounds, in different fonts and layouts, when you enter “Little League Pizza Party”.

It’s AI, but it’s not flashy. This app is clever and useful.

Mark Hatchman/IDG

Designer allows you to use a photo you have already saved on your computer as your starting point. Here, the designer can’t decide what message you’re trying to convey, so you’ll have to tweak the layouts to go beyond the intent—say, an invitation, or “Wish you were here.” The designer seems competent in correctly positioning the focal point of the image at the center.

You can quickly modify another template once you have selected a template. To enhance the scene, you can also make use of some of the suggested elements (which can be found on the left of your workspace). The templates are so well-designed and clean that it doesn’t feel like a mess.

Mark Hatchman/IDG

Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for designers. It is not flashy.

The designer also downplays the focus of the application, which should be the art of artificial Intelligence. Designer’s third field is Use the description to create an imageThe best part of a designer is the ability to create custom wallpapers.

The art of artificial intelligence is just beginning to take off last summer, and the concept is simple: Enter a text description of what you want to see, no matter how fancy, and the AI ​​service will try to generate it. A beach ball is used to create a wedding scene. Andy Warhol’s Gorilla at The Dentist. Pencil drawing depicting a samurai Koala. All of this is possible.

Microsoft will offer suggestions to help you tweak your text prompt. This gives you ideas for how to improve the final result. It’s confusing because it’s not intuitive. To generate results, click the purple arrow icon. There will be three options.

AI nerds will be excited to learn that apparently there is NumberLimits the number images you can create. Microsoft has stated before that instead of using a I present the DALL-E algorithmIt uses the most complicated DALL-E 2 algorithm. My prompts only took about ten seconds for me to get results. You can’t save the results to your hard drive, Designer uses them as a starting point in new projects. However, you can right-click on the images and either open or save them in a new tab. You will see that Microsoft has created 1,024 x 1024 images.

There are some restrictions: You can’t use your own photos as a source of AI art. No obvious painting or coating, the terms used to limit the AI ​​to a specific part of the scene.

Don’t expect flashy cards for your birthday. Trying topless or “pinup” photos resulted with a generic error message (“We could not create a photo this week.”). Celebrity photos work but not Political figures such as Donald Trump. “Barry Bonds in an Airline Pilot’s Costume” and “George Washington & Abraham Lincoln in a Boxing Match” both produced results, even though the former presidents are long deceased. You probably wouldn’t notice the acting of actors such as Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.

Mark Hatchman/IDG

Microsoft uses its Azure cloud network to create AI photos, which will allow you to fetch AI art from a file. Precious luxury like MidjourneyWithin months, it could be a commodity. Microsoft has cleverly overdone it all: Microsoft seems to believe that AI art is another tool that can quickly create beautiful, finished pieces to share with friends, colleagues, and clients.

Microsoft uses the same “it’s just a tool” approach to more detailed editing. Visual guides will be displayed to assist you in aligning other elements on the page if you move page elements. Designer allows you to search within the app to find “beach scene of Maui”, and will return dozens images that you can add into your creation. You can also adjust such things as opacity and size.

Did you happen to find a cute picture of your child with your cat? The AI in-app will allow you to blur the background or completely remove it. It’s not perfect and doesn’t have Photoshop-like tools. It is efficient and fast, though.

It’s great to see some of the tools that Microsoft has used in other applications coming together inside Designer. Paint 3D’s Magic SelectDesigner’s background removal feature, for instance, is a result of Designer’s genesis. Designer also provides a Inspirational meEnter the button VisualsTab, which attempts (I think) make the image more in line with the project’s overall theme; We’ve seen an AI tool similar in Photos appInside Windows

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Microsoft doesn’t differentiate between “free” or “premium” tiers like Clipchamp. This is likely because Designer is part Microsoft 365. Microsoft may have targeted Canva Premium ($12.99 per month), which is Canva’s competitor. Canva Premium includes background removal and premium animation as well as a database of more than 100 million premium images. AI art from text to image) with a terabyte of cloud storage per month. These templates look very similar to Microsoft Designer and Microsoft 365, but I have yet to see the number of designer templates Canva claims to offer.

Designer has one thing that I don’t like. It has an opt-out (not opt out) watermark. This means that when you save your creation, you need to make sure you are checking the right box. Designer makes it simple to complete your project. You have the option to download what you’ve made, or to share it directly from the designer to Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The designer will create a QR code for your phone that you can scan to download the image. It didn’t work for my Android phone, but it is likely that Chrome is the default browser and there are likely permission issues with the beta program.

I also noticed the lack of tie-in or integration with print services—if Designer allows you to make your own professional eBook cover, poster, or greeting card in seconds, why not offer the option to print a project on some nice thick cardstock?

The designer is also great: efficient, smart, simple, intuitive, and fast. Combining Clipchamp with it, it’s the most user-facing service Microsoft has offered in years. Microsoft is experiencing a creative boom, and we’re seeing it in app after app.