As we continue to become a culture over-saturated on visual stimuli, photo software has gone from emphasizing editing tools to focusing on ways to share our pictures. With Windows 8 on the horizon for this year, Microsoft has followed suit with placing a priority on users being able to easily share photos from multiple places on the web simply by using the Photos app that accompany’s the latest incarnation of Windows.

The Windows 8 Photo app makes it easier to view photos from an array of different locations like Facebook and Flickr by linking all of those sources into one place, the Windows Photo App. Visually, the presentation of the photos looks great in its default landscape orientation where you can view photos as a slide-show or as a seamless arrangement of the thumbnails.

It should be noted that when I say that Microsoft emphasized the sharing and mobility aspects of images with the new Photos app, that’s about all you can do with it. While the approach makes good on Microsoft’s effort to have a singular cross-device operating system, some of the candid photographers out there in the world might be feeling a little lost since you won’t be able to make even the slightest of modifications to your images with this app.

Then again, maybe that’s not such a terrible thing and people might, uh, actually try to take quality photos instead of Instagramming pictures within an inch of their lives with sepia filters and pre-fab light leaks.

Carmen Zlateff, the Windows 8 Photo App Principal Program Manager, demonstrates some more of the Photo App’s new features. I have to say, having a unified source of all your photos is a pretty slick feature.

Keep in mind that not everybody wants or should even see all of the pictures you have stored across the various locations of your online life. Inhibition, sometimes, is an invaluable thing.