Windows Photos is the default image viewer in Windows 10/11. People sometimes try to open PDFs in it and end up confused — Photos doesn't handle PDFs at all. The mistake is understandable; the answer is straightforward.
What Windows Photos does
Photos edits JPG, PNG, HEIC, and other image formats. It does crop, rotate, basic colour adjustment, drawing markup, and slideshow creation. For images, it's a fine built-in tool. For PDFs, it doesn't open them at all — Windows passes PDFs to Edge by default.
What to use instead
For PDF edits, use Edge (annotation, signing) plus Flint (text edits, conversion, compression). Both browser-based, both free. The browser is your PDF workspace on Windows; Photos stays for image work.
PDF made from images
If you've made a PDF out of scans or photos (Microsoft Print to PDF, Office Lens, scanner apps), and you want to edit the embedded images — that's a hybrid case. Edit text overlays in Flint, or extract pages as images first (Flint's PDF-to-image converter), edit in Photos, then recombine as PDF.
FAQ
Why does Photos refuse to open PDFs?
It's not a supported format — Photos only handles image files. Windows associates PDFs with Edge by default. Change default app in Settings if you'd prefer another reader.
Can I extract images from a PDF using Photos?
No. Convert the PDF to images first using Flint's converter, then open the images in Photos. Or use Edge's right-click → Save Image for individual page images.
Is there a PDF Photos equivalent?
Closest match: Edge for viewing and basic markup. For full editing, Flint in the browser. There's no single 'Photos for PDFs' built into Windows — the browser fills that role.
Photos for images, Flint for PDFs. Right tool, right job.