With my latest Windows 11 update, the default photo viewer changed radically. The old photo viewer had an "edit" function that allowed me to crop photos easily and adjust brightness - and I could do it very quickly. Now there's a link that opens the photo in something called "Microsoft Designer," which is far more complicated and really doesn't seem to do the basic photo editing I wanted.
There used to be a photo app with Microsoft Windows that was good for photo display and editing and cropping, but that's gone, too.

Google tells me that I can download Windows Photos Legacy, and that's the old photo utility that I liked so much. I had to do some calisthenics to download it and choose it as my default photo viewer, but I've got it working now until Microsoft interferes again. It seems to be the same as the Windows Photos program I used previously, but it opens with a nifty indexing function that I hadn't seen before. It appears that Windows Designer may be helpful for more advanced photo editing.

So, what other free utility can I use for viewing and editing photos?