RSSMicrosoft Seeks JPEG Standard Status for HD Photo
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 1, 2007, 2:07 PM
As predicted back in March, Microsoft moved forward today with plans to submit its HD Photo image format to the Joint Photographic Experts Group, for consideration as a formal standard. If adopted, Microsoft suggests the format be dubbed JPEG XR.
Like a "patent pending," just the move to get HD Photo considered will lend the format an extra degree of legitimacy. Besides utilizing a new and demonstrably more efficient compression scheme whose permissibility for use by Microsoft may not come under fire in court, the scheme depends upon device-specific color profiles as a way of ensuring the integrity of the original image.
Many consumer-grade digital cameras today utilize the JPEG format because it's reasonably robust, and because it utilizes sufficient compression to be able to get enough images onto the flash memory card. Besides, manufacturers tend to think, everyday consumers' eyes won't care about data loss around the edges. White, for most people, is white; and black is thus equally black.
HD Photo is at least selectively revolutionary because it endeavors not to make such assumptions. Most image quality degradation occurs during the translation process - when consumers load a JPEG file, crop it, and resave it. Or when they load it into Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro or a similar imaging program, add graphics, save it, add more graphics, save it again, then reduce it to wallet size and save it yet again.
For the past few decades, profile-independent graphics formats such as JPEG rely on a "color space" that is much more oriented around a computer's ability to retain digits in memory and a monitor's ability to display the contents of memory, than the camera's ability to capture a much broader array of color.
In recent years, professional photographers and image specialists have relied instead on the TIFF format, mainly for its flexibility. First, it can compress images as little as a photographer may desire, with none at all being one option.
Second, it's extensibility allows for the inclusion of so-called EXIF data, which helps store information about the camera and its settings at the time a photograph was taken, along with the photograph. The alternative some photographers prefer is something called RAW format, which isn't actually a format at all, but a non-altered, non-compressed version of the picture the way the camera originally sees it. An imaging application such as Photoshop requires camera-specific "drivers" to be able to interpolate a RAW format image.
Today, Photoshop can make stronger efforts to maintain a TIFF image's original integrity by utilizing the EXIF data stored with that image, along with color profiles maintained by the computer's operating system. This way, the application can use sophisticated math to reinterpret the color values of an image for the display its user happens to be looking at, without actually tampering with the original file.
It's a workable, though complicated, process. HD Photo (or perhaps later, JPEG XR) would seek to simplify that somewhat through a process that's easier for the application to grasp, if more difficult for a writer to explain. It assumes there is no "general color space" or "default gamut," but rather depends entirely upon device color profiles to represent the dynamic range of color it's capable of representing or displaying.
So rather than an image being a re-blended version of a picture that was already hacked up to better fit into memory, HD Photo would give a camera the tools to represent its color space natively. No RAW formats here, though EXIF data about the camera are supported.
To do this, though, Microsoft's engineers took a big gamble by introducing the option of a color value storage format that hasn't seen much use since the 1970s: fixed-point representation.
In a typical standard format, "black" is represented as 0 and "white" or "full saturation" by some maximum value, such as 255 or 65,535 (usually two to some power minus one). But with the dynamic range of CCDs in digital cameras widening, engineers feel it should be up to the camera to decide what's "black" for it.
HD Photo creates a scale, where 0.0 is the minimum and 1.0 is the maximum. The camera determines the breadth of that scale; maybe some displays will match its dynamic range, maybe they won't, but the image integrity won't be compromised.
But that scale would usually mean that every color value is represented as fractional. Floating-point values are much more time consuming for any processor to implement. So Microsoft, perhaps for the first time in decades of its history, offers the fixed-point processing option. This way, values on the zero-to-one scale are represented as integers, and the decimal place is always presumed to be at or near the beginning of the value.
Even if HD Photo is adopted by JPEG - which is a real possibility at this point - a new JPEG XR format isn't likely to upset the balance of power among image formats. TIFF - currently championed by Adobe - isn't going away, though a successful infusion of HD Photo into the digital imaging landscape by Microsoft could bring it one step closer to parity in terms of competition. Microsoft isn't often seen in a come-from-behind position. So if it's embraced by a leading imaging standards body, it will be difficult for competitors to make the case (this time around) that Microsoft doesn't play fair.
Why not just use JPEG2000?
Score: 0
|This will be a big hit with consumers of most popular digital cameras ($100-$300 range). These folks aren't gonna use RAW. They're gonna use this/another comparable format (in terms of quality/size) and "waste" the remaining space of their 16GB memory cards recording VIDEO! Compact digital cameras 3 years old (Canon S60) can do beautiful 640x480 video (although only 10 frames/sec), so in the next 3-5 years, with faster CPUs, similar-size-and-weight digital cameras would do 1280x720 30f/s which is considered high-def. What I'm basically saying is that REGARDLESS of how bigger memory cards, harddrives, and bandwidth gets, we would always find a need for a substantially better image/whatever format. 10-20% better isn't gonna cut it (to decrown a popular format). JPEG XR is 50% better than JPEG (the current king)...
Score: 0
|Perhaps MS should concentrate on fixes for its operating systems, and we'll all be happier.
It clearly doesn't have that completely worked out,and picture representation might be something left to those who have been working with images for a longer time.
Score: 0
|Think there's ever been a post as worthless (besides this one) as yours guru_v?
Score: 0
|You do realize that Microsoft does have separate divisions in the company and not every MS employee works on the operating system.
You also do realize that Apple and Linux and any other kind of complicated software regularly gets fixes as well.
I honestly believe if MS were to make their OS completely immune to viruses and malware, symantec, trend-micro and mcafee would sue into some anti-competitive measure.
This format is nice idea as it moves to a more superior quality but doesn't take the thunder away from adobe as this appears to be geared toward average to medium experienced. Also with MS backing it it has a chance to leave the cutting room floor.
Thanks for contributing nothing other then to troll.
Score: 0
|[You do realize that Microsoft does have separate divisions in the company and not every MS employee works on the operating system.]
Big part of the problem. One would expect bugs in a new operating system. Fine. However, the ones from the predecessor should not continue into the newer revision. The security fixes released for Vista, with their parallels in XP show that is not so.
Another thing - should Microsoft be allowed to dictate any more standards? Even with its attempts at being magnanimous, it has proven to cause more harm than good.
Score: 0
|Well since no one else is trying, and we are still using jpeg as the normal, why can't they, its not like they are monopolizing the format, they see a place that needs improvement, should someone challenge them and create something better (and adopted) then fine.
Vista has had far less fixes then XP had when it was first released.
Vista's biggest problems are compatibility, and certain tasks should not be running slow (which if you looked at the previous articles on here MS is working to fix as a beta patch has been released for testing purposes that does improve a lot of the speed issues that have hurt vista.)
MS cannot be faulted entirely for older software & hardware not working on Vista, ultimately I do believe MS will cave on the virtualization because as more people become aware of this tech they are going to look for alternatives.
With the exception of ME (which was a poor revision to fix 98's problems)Vista is moving along just the same as XP did when it first appeared.
/should apple allow me to install osx on my pc without using hacks, I woudl do it and I am sure plenty of other people would to.
//seeing though as Apple is releasing even more security patches tells me if they were to do this OSX would become what Windows is today.
///If you can create it, you can destroy it
Score: 0
|[Big part of the problem. One would expect bugs in a new operating system. Fine. However, the ones from the predecessor should not continue into the newer revision. The security fixes released for Vista, with their parallels in XP show that is not so.]
It's really too bad we can't personally attack you on here. For an answer to your completely useless comment to the above article: "Apple Fixes 50 Vulnerabilities in Mac OS, iPhone". That's clip from Betanews' site. Obviously you hadn't made it far enough down the page for today to read that one. Obviously all OS companies don't make absolute perfect code. If they did, coders for these companies wouldn't have jobs. They also wouldn't need updates EVER.
MS is finding out little by little that some of their coding is/was flawed and patching it. Mac/Apple is NO different in ANY way-shape-or-form.
Now for my comment to the above article, since that's what the comments are for ... you know ... for COMMENTING SOLELY ON THE ARTICLE.
... This really has been long time coming and I'm surprised it's taken this long. I've actually wanted something where I can save large, high quality prints and not run out of HD space in three seconds b/c I had to disable compression on my digicam. This will hopefully be a really nice compression ratio while making my colors pop. Only downfall is that I now have to get a new digicam (DARN!)
Score: 0
|I think some people miss the concept of HD photo or jpeg xr...
it's a little hard to explain I guess...but it is a little bit like working with the aforementioned RAW format, exif data, and histograms.
The end result with many of our images are the translation algorithms employed by xxx. This is to try and bridge that divide, and make all our images be as they are, as they are intended by us, or as they are intended by our cameras.
I hope this standard comes soon, but better yet, I hope it comes with something to convert my older images to it retaining all of the data that I can.
Score: 0
|Adoption of the standard will be not easy. Adobe's DNG (Digital Negative Graphics) is not widely used, however, the format was described in 1999. Put simply, when Adobe will open the format or abandon license fee then camera producers will use it.I strongly support OpenRAW as an idea. I do not think that Ms will open the format, so the adoption of the format will be marginal.
Score: 0
|Erm, HD Photo on highest quality IS in fact lossless. Anything below quality 100 is lossy.
In both cases it's suppose to outperform both, JPEG and PNG format. And honestly i don't have anything against HD Photo format. Be it MS made or not. If they'd only get proper support for it.
So far there is already a plugin for Adobe and Paint.NET. Now it's time for the hardware...
Score: 0
|JPEG is the crap for photos. Sorry, but like my poster before said: Memorycards aren't expensive these days.
Why no option to support PNG? Lossless compression for best results. The JPEG artefacts makes every photo looking like unprofessional to normal photos.
Score: 0
|You seem to be confusing JPEG the format and JPEG the standards group. JPEG, the Joint Photographic Expert Group is a group that decides on standards, much like the IEEE. So Microsoft, in attempting to get JPEG to certify HD Photo as a standard is much like the IEEE certifying 801.11g.
Score: 0
|There is a kind of JPEGs which are lossless (JPEG-LS - http://www.jpeg.org/jpeg/jpegls.html) in fact the format is widely used in medicine (at least in Europe & Japan, lossy formats are in broad use in America).
I do not think that any lossy format will be good for storing images. In the past lossy formats (like jpg) were used because memory space was incredibly expensive. Memory is cheap today (to be precise the price of storage space drops much faster than the resolution of cameras, moreover, the resolution of sensors will have limitations due to human perception, but the price of memory will not) and compression algorithms are much better than a decade ago, so no one cares that the size of the pictures compressed with lossless formats will be three times bigger than compressed with their lossy cousins. I think that introducing a new lossy format TODAY is a blind lane - even relatively good lossy formats like DJVU slowly extinct.
JPG is like mp3 - lossy, relatively unimpressive but in broad use.
Score: 0
|You mean, of course, 802.11g...
(although I'm sure there is an 801 Project or Working Group, I doubt there's a .11g component to it)
Score: 0
|Anyone know how this format would be licensed?
Score: 0
|If this HD Photo thingy become some kind of JPEG standard, RAND licensing will apply because JPEG standard is an ISO standard. It will not be entirely free in costs (maybe only in hardware), but it will be cheap, accessible and non-discriminatory.
Score: 0
|Memory cards are so cheap these days and can fit so many jpegs, that the small amount of room current jpegs take up (efficiency) don't matter to me anymore.
If anything, I get paranoid about physical damage to the cards, and regularly pull pictures out well before they even get a couple of hundred megs filled.
It's amazing how so few people realize what they do to their jpegs when they keep opening, manipulating and re-saving them.
Score: 0
|CNET's review of JPEG XR had very favorable things to say about the format. Frankly, anything is better than the JPEG standard of today.
While RAW-style formats are great for professionals and high-end cameras, JPEG XR could be used on low to mid-range cameras and give comparable improvements in image quality.
Score: 0
|