Lastly, a helpful AI picture creator

Until you’re a inventive skilled or social media marketer, likelihood is that you simply’ve by no means discovered a lot use for AI picture turbines. That’s very true when the likes of Midjourney and DALL-E value a minimal of $10 monthly with no free trial on provide. Fortunately, Microsoft has inexplicably bucked that development since final 12 months, providing free use of DALL-E by way of its Designer app (as soon as often called Bing Picture Creator). However you is perhaps stunned to study that Microsoft Designer has since morphed from a easy AI picture generator to a quite succesful graphic design instrument at present.

Microsoft Designer exited beta final week and landed on cell, which prompted me to strive it out for the primary time in months. Upon launching the app, I used to be stunned to study that Designer has nearly shelved its AI picture era capabilities in favor of extra helpful, on a regular basis functions. Some examples embrace designing invites and postcards, avatars for chat apps, social media posts, and even distinctive coloring pages. The app additionally gives one-click templates for these eventualities which you can edit later. 

You don’t need to be an AI prompting genius to get satisfactory outcomes from Microsoft Designer, though the ability can definitely assist if you need the completed end result to look a sure manner. Nonetheless, the simplicity in itself makes Designer extra helpful than any competing service. That’s the idea anyway, however how effectively does it work? Fairly effectively, I’d say — the AI-generated outcomes are often much better than what you’d get by throwing collectively a couple of photographs. Right here’s an instance:

Merely click on on one of many dozen or so templates, modify it together with your directions, and also you’re achieved — your entire course of takes lower than a minute. Nonetheless, the expertise isn’t completely flawless.

After I first began utilizing Microsoft Designer, I observed that it could fail spectacularly at producing textual content. Whereas it may deal with phrases like “birthday” in greeting playing cards, it fumbled after I requested for the phrase “retirement”. Fortunately, the repair is quite easy since Designer has developed right into a graphic design app. Create an invite as an alternative of a greeting card and also you’ll be capable to embrace as a lot textual content as you want with none apparent AI errors. The identical applies to the social posts class, the place you can too add customized photographs to incorporate alongside the AI-generated design.

That is potential as a result of every Designer venture resembles a PowerPoint slide as an alternative of representing a completed picture. You’ll be able to add a number of photographs, textual content components, and drag them round to create a design. The profit is that the AI-generated end result will be custom-made to your liking and the AI can keep away from difficult duties like including textual content to photographs. Nevertheless, the app nonetheless inexplicably does the latter in sure eventualities like greeting playing cards, so that you’ll merely need to keep away from requesting textual content in prompts that use fundamental picture era.

That minor nitpick apart, Designer’s means to robotically weave AI-generated media with your individual photographs additionally permits it to create collages and different kinds of image-heavy designs. You may design a recipe card, for instance. And you would simply as simply scale as much as create a whole cookbook.

Designer additionally gives the same old slew of AI picture modifying instruments that we’ve seen on a number of Android telephones in 2024. The same old choices can be found right here — you possibly can take away backgrounds, erase sure parts of a picture, add a body round a portrait, or create “restyled” photographs. These work effectively sufficient, however there’s nothing new or thrilling on provide which you can’t get from a whole lot of different apps. You additionally solely get 15 day by day Designer boosts until you pay for Microsoft’s Copilot Professional subscription, so I’d save them for one thing extra helpful.

All in all, Microsoft has lastly made an AI picture generator that’s sensible sufficient for most people to think about using. Not like Midjourney or its numerous rivals, you aren’t left scratching your head questioning how greatest to utilize it. However Microsoft Designer nonetheless faces an id drawback — superior AI customers gained’t take care of such a fundamental instrument and informal customers gained’t know to make use of it within the first place. Nonetheless, it’s a step in the suitable route and I hope Microsoft continues to enhance it.