Microsoft AI Relight: Transform Photos with Professional Lighting Controls on Windows

Lighting is the secret ingredient that often distinguishes a good photo from a great one. Yet even seasoned photographers know that capturing the perfect light in every scenario is notoriously challenging. From unpredictable weather and shifting sunlight to tricky indoor conditions, real-world environments rarely cooperate with our creative vision. Dark shadows, washed-out highlights, or simply drab, flat scenes are all-too-common frustrations. But with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, even these hurdles are no longer insurmountable obstacles. Microsoft’s AI-driven Relight feature, recently launched in the Microsoft Photos app for Copilot+ PCs, promises an intuitive and powerful solution, giving anyone the ability to transform their photos with just a few clicks—no fancy lighting rigs, advanced editing expertise, or paid subscriptions necessary.

How AI Relight Works: A Revolution for Everyday Photography​

Central to Microsoft’s approach is accessibility. According to the company’s official documentation, Relight leverages advanced machine learning algorithms capable of understanding depth, context, and the existing lighting nuances within a photo. Rather than relying on crude brightness adjustments, Relight reconstructs a 3D map of each image, simulating how light interacts with objects and faces. This foundational technology enables a suite of practical tools—five of which stand out for their transformative potential.

1. Virtual Spotlights: Precision Lighting at Your Fingertips​

One of Relight’s headline features is the ability to drop in up to three virtual lights anywhere within your image. Imagine these as adjustable, on-demand spotlights that behave like real light sources: each can be independently moved, colored, and focused to shape the mood of your shot. Want to illuminate a face lost in silhouette, add a pop of color to the background, or simulate the effect of a softbox without a studio setup? With Relight, these adjustments are possible with simple drag-and-drop controls.
This granular control echoes the flexibility of professional-grade editing, but without the steep learning curve or need for Adobe-style layers and brushes. For portrait shots, virtual lights can soften harsh shadows or highlight key features. In product photography, the feature draws attention to textures and details that normally vanish in flat or uneven lighting. According to hands-on reviews from prominent tech sites and Microsoft's support materials, the color options add another layer of creativity: mixing warm and cool tones or dramatic hues transforms a mundane scene into something captivating.

2. Adjust Brightness and Intensity: Set the Scene, Shape the Mood​

While many photo editing apps offer one-size-fits-all brightness sliders, Relight’s controls are more sophisticated. Users can fine-tune both the intensity and coverage of each virtual light. For some shots, dialing down the brightness creates a soft, dreamy ambience reminiscent of dusk. Cranking up intensity can simulate bold, theater-like highlights—perfect for drawing attention or adding depth to scene elements.
Crucially, these intensity adjustments are context-aware. Because Relight’s AI understands the three-dimensional layout of your image, it prevents common pitfalls like overexposure or flattening out details. Shadows and gradients are recreated in a lifelike fashion, allowing users to “paint with light” in ways that preserve realism. For creative professionals and social media enthusiasts alike, this level of control opens the door to expressive visual storytelling that was previously the domain of specialists equipped with expensive gear.

3. Color Temperature and Tint: Recreate Any Hour, Any Atmosphere​

Light isn’t just about brightness; its color temperature tells an emotional story. Early morning and late afternoon shots, bathed in golden warmth or cool blue, are sought after for a reason. Relight allows users to not only change the color of individual spotlights but to shift the entire temperature and tint of a scene with just a few adjustments. Want to recapture the feel of golden hour, or cool down a harshly-lit indoor photo? The tool makes these transformations effortless.
Several independent reviews highlight how Relight handles skin tones—historically a tricky area for automated tools. The AI’s nuanced approach preserves natural tones while allowing artistic changes elsewhere, a crucial detail that prevents portraits from looking artificial.
On the technical side, Microsoft notes that Relight’s temperature adjustments respect the physics of light blending, so results are more photorealistic than filters found on older mobile editing apps. This ensures photos remain authentic even as their mood shifts dramatically.

4. Smart Shadows and Highlights: Recover Lost Details​

Photographers know the frustration of losing details in the darkest shadows or brightest highlights. While traditional editing can attempt to recover these areas, it usually results in noisy, washed-out, or unnatural artifacts. Relight takes a smarter approach: by understanding an image’s geometry and surface materials, it selectively lifts shadows or tones down highlights with remarkable precision.
For example, you can rescue a subject’s face obscured by hat shadow, or tone down a blown-out window in a cityscape, without degrading the rest of the photo. The feature is particularly valuable for travel photos, indoor family gatherings, or any situation where uncontrolled lighting wreaks havoc.
Crucially, Relight often avoids the “HDR look” that plagues many automatic enhancement tools. Its selective edits blend more naturally into the scene, maintaining subtle midtones and a sense of depth. Side-by-side comparisons provided in Microsoft’s promotional materials and corroborated by third-party testers reveal a tangible improvement in perceived image quality.

5. One-Click Presets: Effortless Enhancement for Beginners​

For users who want instant results, Relight includes a library of AI-powered presets. Options like “Natural Boost,” “Sunset Glow,” or “Cinematic Drama” combine multiple edits—virtual lighting, color grading, and selective shadows—into a single click. Even without familiarity with photo editing jargon, anyone can dramatically improve a lackluster picture.
This approach, common in some smartphone apps, is elevated here by the depth-awareness of Microsoft’s underlying AI. Whereas usual filters merely overlay color, Relight’s presets interact with the photo’s virtual lighting to achieve layered, realistic effects.
The result is an on-ramp for beginners: users are encouraged to explore more advanced controls once they see what’s possible. According to user testimonials and expert reviews, this democratizes creative image editing, making professional-level results accessible to anyone with a Copilot+ PC.

Behind the Scenes: How Relight’s AI Achieves Realism​

Relight’s technical secret sauce lies in the way it “sees” and models your image. Microsoft’s research indicates that the AI constructs a 3D approximation from a flat photograph—a process known as monocular depth estimation. Tools like these have been rapidly evolving, thanks to the proliferation of large visual datasets and transformer-based neural networks.
By reconstructing depth, Relight can calculate how real-world light would bounce, scatter, and cast shadows on people and objects. This overcomes the main limitation of classic 2D editing tools, which are blind to spatial context. According to papers published by Microsoft Research, the same core technologies are being explored for advanced video enhancement, AR filters, and even synthetic content generation.
Because all this processing is performed on-device, privacy and performance are enhanced. The AI models are optimized for use on Copilot+ PCs, taking advantage of local neural processing units (NPUs) for real-time results—no cloud uploads or waiting for round-trips. This marks a shift toward more secure and efficient photo editing, a major selling point for privacy-conscious users.

Real-World Applications: Who Benefits Most?​

Relight is designed for anyone who wants better photos, but certain groups stand to gain the most:

• Content creators and influencers: The ability to quickly polish images—fixing backlighting, enhancing subject focus—means less time editing and more consistent branding.
• Small business owners: Product photos, real estate shots, and event documentation often suffer from suboptimal lighting. Relight’s intuitive tools yield professional images without professional costs.
• Families and travelers: Casual photos taken on the go rarely offer perfect conditions. The tool revives memories with minimal effort.
• Aspiring photographers: Beginners can learn the craft of lighting without expensive kits, developing an intuitive sense of how light shapes emotion and clarity.

Accessibility and Device Requirements​

Currently, Relight is available exclusively on Copilot+ PCs running the latest version of Windows 11 and the updated Microsoft Photos app. While this limits access to newer devices, the move is strategic: by harnessing integrated NPUs, Relight delivers fast, private, and energy-efficient performance—a technical leap from the cloud-dependent models seen in major mobile apps.
However, this hardware exclusivity does come with potential downsides. Users with older PCs or those reliant on other operating systems won’t benefit unless Microsoft expands compatibility in future releases. Several industry analysts suggest that wider rollout may follow as local AI chipsets become standard across more hardware tiers.

Strengths: Why Relight Stands Out​

• Exceptional ease of use: Deep editing power without the intimidation factor. UI design has been consistently praised for clarity and workflow logic.
• Photorealistic results: Advanced depth modeling and shadow simulation lead to natural, credible images—not overprocessed “filter” effects.
• No additional costs: Unlike many competitors, Relight is bundled with Microsoft Photos on supported PCs—no subscriptions or paywalled features.
• Privacy-centric operation: All AI computation stays local, addressing growing concerns around cloud-based photo analysis.
• Real-time feedback: Instant previews make experimentation fun and encourage creative exploration.

Risks and Caveats: Where Caution is Warranted​

• Device limitations: Requires a Copilot+ PC, placing advanced editing out of reach for millions of existing users. Future support for older hardware is uncertain as of this writing.
• Dependency on AI accuracy: As with any AI-driven system, errors in depth estimation or face recognition can lead to awkward lighting that looks synthetic or out of place. While infrequent, these artifacts may require manual touch-up or discarding an edit.
• Potential for creative stagnation: Automated tools can encourage over-reliance on presets, reducing the motivation to learn manual techniques or experiment outside the box.
• Data transparency: While local processing is the default, users should remain vigilant regarding potential telemetry or data sharing connected to future app updates. Comprehensive transparency reports from Microsoft would help address such concerns.
• Lack of advanced batch processing: Power users who need to edit thousands of images at scale may find Relight’s one-at-a-time workflow slower compared to professional software suites.

How Relight Compares: AI Photo Editing in the Wider Market​

Competitors in the AI-driven editing space are numerous, from established giants like Adobe Lightroom’s Enhance AI to upstarts such as Luminar Neo or Google Photos’ Magic Editor. Each offers some version of smart lighting and color tools, but Relight has carved a niche through the combination of depth-aware spotlighting and hardware-accelerated performance.
Adobe’s offerings, for example, are more flexible for serious photographers, with pixel-level masking, HDR bracketing, and cross-platform support. However, they require subscriptions and significantly more expertise. Many mobile-centric apps, meanwhile, focus on quick fixes with lower fidelity and less realism in complex scenes.
What sets Relight apart is the marriage of professional-level results with beginner-friendly simplicity—all tightly integrated into Windows’ default workflow. For everyday users and those new to photo editing, it represents a leap forward in both usability and technical sophistication.

Future Directions: What Comes Next?​

Microsoft’s foray into AI-powered media tools signals bigger ambitions. Industry observers and developer roadmaps suggest that future versions of Relight may expand into video enhancement, animated lighting effects, and live camera integration for improved webcam quality. There’s also potential for expanded hardware support as machine learning chips become ubiquitous.
Collaboration with third-party software, support for RAW files, and more granular editing controls are frequently requested features and may appear in future updates. The software’s modular AI design—run locally on NPUs—prepares it for easy adaptation as the Windows ecosystem evolves.

Final Verdict: Transforming Photography, One Click at a Time​

AI-powered Relight marks a significant advancement for mainstream photo editing on Windows. By combining deep-learning magic with approachable controls and real-world practicality, it gives every user—from casual shooters to content creators—a tangible path to better images. While hardware requirements and occasional AI quirks can limit universal appeal, the technology’s strengths overwhelmingly outweigh its drawbacks.
Ultimately, Relight is not just about fixing bad light—it’s about reclaiming creative control. In an era defined by digital imagery, this tool puts professional-looking photo enhancement within reach for anyone with a new Windows PC. For those tired of unpredictable shadows or missed golden hours, Microsoft’s AI Relight offers a bright solution—literally and figuratively—heralding a new age where lighting perfection is just a click away.

---

Source: Microsoft 5 Ways to Enhance Photo Lighting with AI | Microsoft Windows