Microsoft will make a move designed to kill the JPEG photo format. The
Joint Photographic Experts Group standard is at this time the
ubiquitous file format for digital photographies. With
the introduction of HD Photo, Microsoft aims to deliver a
superior alternative to JPEG. In this context, the Redmond Company has
revealed that it will submit the HD Photo format to an appropriate
standards organization in order to make it an industry standard and not
a technology that is intimately connected to Microsoft.
HD Photo has been applauded for delivering a superior photographic
experience in comparison with the JPEG format. Higher quality, fewer
artifacts, increased fidelity, advanced resolution decoding and image
data manipulation together with lossless and lossy image compression
capabilities are the arguments that place HD Photo over JPEG.
“With HD Photo, we're taking a new approach to creating and editing
photos that simply isn't available to photographers with today's
formats,” said Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of the
Consumer Media Technology Group at Microsoft. “HD Photo fully preserves
the original image fidelity with high dynamic range while still
allowing for significant improvement in compression size.”
Microsoft also made available a beta release of a set of
HD Photo plug-ins
(at the time of this article the plug-ins were not yet available for
download) designed to integrate seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop
software. Via the HD Photo plug-ins, Photoshop users will be able to
view and write files in the new Microsoft photo format from Adobe
applications. Microsoft informed that it will deliver support for both
Photoshop CS2 and CS3. The Redmond Company announced that the final
version of the plug-ins will be delivered as a free download within 60
days.
“These plug-ins enable users to both read and write HD Photo files from
within Adobe Photoshop software, and include support for high dynamic
range pixel formats (...) and will be available for Windows Vista and
Windows XP, as well as Mac OS X (Universal Binary),” Microsoft added in
a press release.
