A New Format For Digital Photographs...

[Teddy Rogers]

Lately, Microsoft has been a continuous source of news, the Redmond company announcing today at WinHEC a new format for digital photos.

And when we say a new format, we don’t mean a new extension, but a whole new structure, which offers a clearly superior quality when compared to one of the most popular standards today, the well-known JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group).

According to Microsoft, Windows Media Photo employs a new, state-of-the-art compression algorithm optimized for the digital photography market, capable of offering image quality comparable to JPEG-2000 with computational and memory performance more closely comparable to JPEG.

Windows Media Photo delivers a lossy compressed image of better perceptive quality than JPEG at less than half the file size. The same compression algorithm can also deliver mathematically lossless compressed images that are typically 2.5 times smaller than the original uncompressed data.

“One of the biggest reasons people upgrade their PCs is digital photos," News.com quoted Bill Crow, program manager for Windows Media Photo, as saying. He also mentioned that Microsoft has been in contact with printer makers, digital camera companies and other unnamed industry partners while working on Windows Media Photo.

The only problem the giant software is likely to face with Windows Media Photo is getting the format adopted by the whole photographic industry.

Ted.

[ECLiPTiC]

Interesting....

I wonder if it can be viewed with typical image viewers, or edited with photoshop? I'm guessing if it's a whole new format viewers and such will need an upgrade to handle it. I'll have to look into it.

EclipTic

[hosiminh]

Yet another close-source format from MS (nothing new indeed)

Whats wrong with JPG/PNG ?

Tipical marketing crap as usual

This quote remind me of state-of-the-art packers/protectors :/

[Sigma]

Whats wrong with JPG/PNG ?

Nothing. This will just be that much better

According to Microsoft, Windows Media Photo employs a new, state-of-the-art compression algorithm optimized for the digital photography market, capable of offering image quality comparable to JPEG-2000 with computational and memory performance more closely comparable to JPEG.

Windows Media Photo delivers a lossy compressed image of better perceptive quality than JPEG at less than half the file size. The same compression algorithm can also deliver mathematically lossless compressed images that are typically 2.5 times smaller than the original uncompressed data.

Clearly states (provided it will be as advertised) that it is JPG, but way better.

[Teddy Rogers]

I think its because of the higher megapixels used in the next generation cameras that they created a new format. It seems very coincidental that a week or two afer releasing the first 10 megapixal digital photograph M$ come out with a new digital format to compress and view photographic media even better than JPEG and JPEG 2000 can.

As it says in the news brief it is all down to the photographic industry if this format will be adopted. Who knows what royalties M$ may ask for this if it becomes a popular digital format sometime in the future...

Ted.

[Baxter]

....not a hijack.. but very related...

Typical native JPGs are not as compressed or as "sweet" as they can be.

Pull your JPGs down with this app and not only see the size reduce greatly, but loss of quality is practically nil.

http://www.xat.com/io/index.html

I suspect that the new MS format simply adds this new compression (comparable) to their native format.

I have a 5meg dig cam and on full res it takes images at 2.5megabytes -> Image Optimizer pulls them down to 600K... and perfect reproduction.

................. back on topic.................

[Teddy Rogers]

Thats a 3rd party tool which people would have to buy and use seperately. I think what M$ want to do is have their format adopted and built directly in to photographic hardware such as cameras...

Ted.