Microsoft is looking to supplant the ubiquitous JPEG with an image format of its own--and it's hoping the debut of Windows Vista will help do the job.
In 2006, Microsoft began promoting its own image standard, formerly called Windows Media Photo but renamed HD Photo in November. The company makes no bones about its ambitions: "Our ultimate goal is that it does become the de facto standard people are using for digital photos," said Josh Weisberg, Microsoft's director of digital imaging evangelism.
"HD" doesn't actually stand for "high definition," but it's supposed to connote the better image quality that comes with HD TV. Rico Malvar, a Microsoft Research director who helped develop the format, said that compared with JPEG, HD Photo preserves more subtle details, offers richer colors and takes up half the storage space at the same image quality.
Clearly looks (technically) better than JPEG. Although their image comparison doesn't take into account the differences attributed to sensor error etc. So a crap camera with Microsoft's images will not be better than a good camera with JPEG, assuming the same compression ratio etc.
But still - this was an interesting (and refreshing) part of the article:
Quote:
Microsoft is also trying hard to court business partners for the format. It dropped the "Windows Media Photo" moniker not just because HD Photo is more descriptive, but also because of partners' objections
"Manufacturers of a product that might compete with something to do with Windows...didn't like putting something branded 'Windows' into some of their products," he said. "We don't really care too much for the potential backlash in the industry: 'Here goes Microsoft again with another Windows thing they want us to use.'"
Microsoft also lowered licensing barriers to try to speed adoption. "As you can tell from the license terms, this is not something where we said, 'Let's make billions of dollars off this,'" Weisberg said. The only licensing obligation is to maintain HD Photo image compatibility.
Open-source software also can support HD Photo, Weisberg said, even though Microsoft holds patents for the technology. HD Photo technology is covered by the Open Specification Promise, an agreement under which Microsoft pledges not to assert its patent rights.
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Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
With Adobe on board, it looks like there's a fair chance that this will get acceptance, at least for higher-end pics. The fact that it supports lossless compression along greater colour range than JPG but takes much less space than RAW all favour.
Yeah the much denser colour range looks like a winner. Most cameras these days support various compression "strengths" and various noise reduction settings, but probably the VAST majority of people don't care, or even know.
But added colour definition in an image without going to RAW would be pretty neat. My camera uses 20MB for a RAW photo and then it's pretty heavy on the CPU for post image processing. This is a good stepping stone by the sounds of it.
And of course RAW is pretty far from portable.
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Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
Would be nice to see jpeg on the out. Honestly its not that good of a format as it can by very lossy and take up a lot of space. Still it's better than a lot of stuff out there.
I would love to see better quality with similar or smaller file sizes (last trip I took I have over 600mb of Photos and that is only because I shot on Med. Quality, high quality and I would have been up over 1gb :) )
Originally Posted by ktvyeow
Wow, what camera are you using? 20 MegaPixels??
Will be nice to be able to see what the new format does..
RAW format is big on not even that high of a mp camera. My camera (Canon 300D) makes similar sized raw photos and it is only 6mp :)
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i dunno... i have never had a problem with jpeg, i dont see why there needs to be a replacment... at least at this point in time...
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