Microsoft will soon submit a new photo format to an international standards organization that it says offers higher quality images with better compression, the company said on Thursday.
The format, HD Photo -- recently renamed from Windows Media Photo -- is taking aim at the JPEG format, a 15-year old technology still widely used in digital cameras and image applications.
Both formats take images and use compression to make the file sizes smaller so more photos can fit on a memory card. During compression, however, the quality of the photo tends to degrade.
Microsoft said HD Photo's lightweight algorithm causes less damage to photos during compression, with higher-quality images that are half the size of JPEG.
The format can also accommodate "lossless" and "lossy" compression, two methods of compressing photo data with different effects on image quality. Microsoft said adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bitmap formats.
Although JPEG is aging, it has been modified to help keep it up to date. The latest JPEG 2000 format features better image quality while also supporting lossless and lossy compression. The original JPEG did only lossy.
Time will tell whether HD Photo can supplant JPEG by gaining the support of printer, camera, and application vendors. But Microsoft is supporting the format in products such as its Vista and XP OSes and has already gained an important vendor ally.
In the next two months, Adobe Systems and Microsoft will release a plug-ins for CS3 and CS2 versions of its widely used Photoshop program for Vista, XP, and Apple's OS X. Also, Microsoft also has built a HD Photo Device Porting Kit so hardware manufacturers can support it.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive Hardware Resource Alerts
