A good part of Designer has been deleted with no notice or explanation. Erase is missing with only a ‘dumb’ alternative.
The feature is Erase it let you select and remove parts of an image and automatically fill the area with surrounding content. The entire ‘Erase’ option has disappeared for no reason that Microsoft cares to share.
It’s a real shame because the smart Erase was incredibly useful. As readers of Microsoft Designer: Straight Talk know, you could upload any photo to Designer then use the AI image editing tools (including Erase) to tweak an image then download the image to your computer. No need to use the image in a design at all!
At first it seemed that only the Brush Select part of Erase had been, er, erased but now the whole smart Erase has gone both Quick Select and Brush (manual) Select.
Blur Background and Remove Background are still in Designer and explained in the Images chapter of Microsoft Designer: Straight Talk (pages 90/91 of the current edition, part of whole section on adjusting images in Designer).
‘Dumb’ Erase?
There is an object Erase still in Designer but it’s ‘dumb’, meaning it just removes a selection with no replacement.
Select an image then choose ‘Quick Select’ (lasso) from the toolbar.
Click on part of the image you’re interested in (that’s the quick select part), it’ll change to the purple with stars. Then choose to either Copy (to clipboard), Duplicate (into the same image) or Remove the selection/object.
Remove object leaves a white (really transparent) block in the image without the smart/generative fill customers had enjoyed.
Now all Designer customers can do is download the image and use another picture editor to make the changes that they were doing in Designer.
What’s happening?
No word from Microsoft on what’s happening to their smart Erase feature.
Is it gone for good? That’s unlikely, perhaps it’ll reappear when Designer goes ‘pro’ with some features reserved for Microsoft 365 customers.
Maybe there are too many bugs in Erase and it’s being rested while repairs are under way? That’s possible though unlikely given the popular backlash to Erase’s disappearance.
It’s possible Microsoft is concerned about legal liability about misuse of the feature to tamper with images.
Microsoft Designer is still in ‘preview’ which means the company feels free to add, change or drop features anytime they like. Mind you, the ‘preview’ label is an increasingly feeble excuse considering the heavy publicity that Microsoft Designer gets.
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