Replacing? I dont think so...

Just a general comment. From Wikipedia's entry on it...

"While named "HD Photo", there is no relevance to or association with high-definition multimedia, such as HDTV."

So it's just a name, rather than a hint of its functionality.

Well if they can really provide better compression rate at lower image quality degradation i can only welcome it. JPEG is ok, but honestly for todays times it's just outdated (hint: PNG).
But it has to be open standard so everyone will jump on its bandwagon. Otherwise it'll just burn miserably like many other "closed" formats...

PNG is lossless. JPEG are generally not.(there is a standard for lossless jpegs but it is rarely used) They serve a different purpose.

Whether it takes off or not will really depend upon whether most of the third party editing suites decide to adopt it.

As a casual photographer I welcome this new format if it contains DRM. It would be nice to be able to share my photos with the world without some company stealing them and using them without permision on their site.
Its a matter of time before I would get in trouble with a limited release contract with a model if the pictures were on a site I did not declare.
This problem is very widespread too I believe

It's nice to see someone pointing out that DRM is not some evil thing sent from satan to enslave us all. Yeah certain *iaa industries go too far with it, but it does have good uses as well.

Open Source? Creative Commons? Unless it's fully "open" for all platforms and no strings attached it won't succeed. Still too many *NIX systems out there on the net handling a megaton of JPEG content. MS would have to make it extremely smooth and painless to migrate it all. Otherwise, it's not "replacing" anything. Just adding yet another format to the pool. Actually, nevermind, they can't really "replace" JPEG anyway. Technically, that would imply they are not supporting it, but instead, the new HD format. So they'd have to provide an on-the-fly converter. Not likely. So "technically", they're really only "adding" a new format for everyone to deal with.

I'm looking forward to the new format but on the other hand I have to say I'm every uncertain of it.

The way MS has gone with Vista and its HD DRM encryption worries me and now a new HD image format I can see it now, you'll need to download a codec just the view this image or have Window Genuine installed.

Standardizing this format for everyone what about the people out there still using Win98, CE and 2000 with old outdated system hardware. Most HD support is only supported on XP, 2003 and Vista hardware and even then it’s not true HD.

We’ll have to see how this plays out. Two words MS should use “Open Source” that way the "standard" can be adopted much fastermultiple platforms.

This will be good. It's too long in waiting for something like this.

I am one of those that doesn't mind the DRMs and Genuine requirements. As for standards and formats...sometimes we have to move forward and take steps. Much like buyng a Sony Consumer/prosumer HD camcorder and using the AVCHD format.

open source has often not proven to be any better than closed standards...many fall behind and often hold everyone back because they think it will be better sooner.

If a closed standard is good enough and put to good use it becomes and open standard. We as consumers should not have to wait for some group to decide for us what we should use instead.

Wauuuuuu, I wondered with this note!!!, I love Microsoft !!!

Ahh, I was waiting for something like this! I smell...
Well, seems like Micro$oft can't handle JPEG well enough to insert DRM on it. So, new standard!
Happy infectation on a new poor standard!

You really should refrain from generalised sweeping statements based on no real fact, until you actually evaluate the standard and see what it actually does offer photographers.

You are right, I still have no proof...
But, through history, Microsoft never produced a good standard, and less "for free". WM formats are close and good examples of that: I'll take video as example:
Against open standards it has Inferior quality, it is incompatible (even when they are based on MPEG4), and even incompatible against their own previous versions (WMV9 is open, but still propietary), and the worst: badly infected with DRM.
Even when I still didn't see the standard, I smell bad when that corporation announce a new standard, but I could be wrong, and Microsoft may release a good new standard, and later make Windows open source.. err, no? Well, ok

I presume it's another format that uses wavelet compression?

(I have not RTFA since there's no link to a FA)

I wonder how this format might be useful if you have no means to create these super 12 bit per channel photos and pictures.

No average camera can shot such a picture, no average monitor can display it.

Besides we have a JPEG2000.

jpeg2000 license is too expensive to use making it irrelevant.
if MS wants to replace jpeg, they gotta make it free and easy

JPEG2000 might make sense in a limited number of industrial applications but the application support is still too limited to distribute any content in that format. Given how many years JPEG2000 has been around I doubt it will ever become a popular format on the web.

BTW, when they say standardize, do they mean as in making it free for all to use, including for s/w devs to include it in their software?

Josh Weiseberg, the MS evangelist for the format was cited by CNET in January stating "As you can tell from the license terms, this is not something where we said, 'Let's make billions of dollars off this'... The only licensing obligation is to maintain HD Photo image compatibility." That certainly sounds promising. See http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-6153730.html

"Compression with HD Photo is twice that of JPEG with fewer artifacts, the company claims. Due to this, images are clearer and half the size of those saved in the popular format."

Yeah, and Windows Media Audio gives you CD quality at 64 kbps.

Actually, I'm in a really unique position... I was exposed to the wmp/hdp format a couple of years ago in development, and I was also a quality engineer for audio software... and I can blanketly say that the wma "cd quality" statement was a total farse from marketing. I also know that this image codec is really good. It works in a very unique way, and while I'm not an expert on the way the brain analyzes images, it does use a process that sort of works like the way digital camouflage works when it's lossy. Your perception is unaffected even though you see dots, and that's because of the way it blends around known quantities.

WMA on the other hand is a pretty good lossy format, with wide adoption, and a marketing tagline that makes people scoff at the notion of using it. WMA @ 192 is pretty damned good. I still prefer V0 mp3 for compatibility reasons, but the music I do have in wma is pretty good. WMA at 64 is FM radio, at best.

Point is, Microsoft spends more on marketing than several small countries' GDP annually. This may actually be a format that cuts through the BS - but only if Microsoft GIVES IT AWAY. Maybe they charge Adobe, etc., for it. But users had better be able to get in and out of it easily.

MP3 is nearly 15 years old, and has definitely been technically surpassed. Last I checked, it's still working well...

I'd say that WMA is still pretty lousy compared to the competition, i.e. aac and ogg vorbis. WMA professional or whatever they call it is better. WMA may be "pretty damned good" at 192, but ogg vorbis and aac are dito at 128 kbps.

But this is OT so I'll stop there.

Agreed; to your points, and OT.

Wow, Microsoft is once again trying to revolutionize the internet. With the widespread popularity of the JPEG format, and how integrated it has become in web development, I think Microsoft should apply their efforts to creating an alternative to the GIF format, or making for better transparency support in the PNG format.

Yea yea, so what if HD Photo looks better than JPEG. It doesn't mean crap if I put it on my webpage and my viewers just see a broken file that isn't supported by their browser, or operating system. Does Microsoft expect Apple to freely support this new format out of the gate? What about the ever-growing Linux population?

The only benefit I see coming from this is if the format gets picked up by the digital camera industry.

That's what they're doing. If they use a more compressed format vs. same quality, you get less memory usage. That extends battery life significantly in cameras. Only flashbulbs drain faster.

So they get, say, Canon to sign on. Then it's viable. Before anyone bags the format itself, it's actually a frickin' genius format. It's really, really good; probably better than JPEG2000. It means nothing, though, if there's limited adoption.

"you get less memory usage."

Yup! So That's where all the memory get used by Windows! In JPEGs!!!!! Who woulda thunk it!?

Its nice to see that MS has finally gotten religion when it comes to memory usage and has decided to tackle the really significant cause of the problem!

There's nothing like taking the bull by the horns!

You go MS!

lmao

I think he meant flash-memory, not ram-memory. As in, "A 1MB memory card could hold more photos if it was done in this new format"

...and by being able to save your picture much quicker (smaller file size), the user is also not draining his battery as quickly with excess writing times.

Trading minimal storage write time for an increased encoding time doesn't seem like a saving to me.

They released and SDK. What more do you want them to do? Write a plugin for every flavour of every OS? Thats what open source communities are for.

Are you reading the same article as the rest of us? Where in this entire article do you see "increased encoding time"?

I'm in favor of a lossless image format to replace jpeg, given it really will have compression as good or better without a large resource impact.

I'm NOT in favor of it being done by Microsoft, hopefully HD Photo will be bought out by Adobe, because they certainly have a better idea what they're doing in this category.

P.S. This is old news.

What's next, Microsoft buying out Adobe or at least the photoshop project? Unlikely considering they own Paint.net; which is really on the rise.

Lossless image compression doesn't get much better than PNG. You start to hit a barrier, the same as with lossless audio compression, past which you cannot compress at a much higher rate. There's a PNG compressor which uses 7-Zip deflation (I think it's called AdvPNG) and that's probably as good as you're going to get, as far as lossless image compression goes. There might be some way to create a better algorithm, but you won't squeeze more than a few more percentage points out of it.

Blah blah blah.....Microsoft this......Microsoft that.

Empty promises.

Go Apple!

Shut up

You cant silence the truth.

What truth? What has Apple given us? .mov's? Yeah, I'm all excited here in how this format transformed my life.

the truth....you can't handle the truth.

what truth would that be?

don't forget qt!

Don't forget pretentious twits. They've given us tons of those.

Once again, sweeping statements from the ill-informed and sadly mistaken. Microsoft have released a new image compression format that will be freely available to users. Whats the harm in that. The users will prevail. If it's better, we will know soon enough.

Is that a joke?

/User Ignore

Hahahahahhaha!

You all suck. :)

Rehash - http://www.betanews.com/..._Alternative/1148594312

Yeah. I thought it was Windows Media Photo, not HD Photo...
Damn, i have to look for hdphotoenc.exe and force guys at www.compression.ru to perform objective compression comparison AGAIN!?!?!? /8-[ ~ ]

They changed the name...

i suppose it's a bit like mp3, there are so much better codecs available, notably aac, but mp3 still dominates,

same with jpeg and jpeg 2000, in fact it's surprising how many people don't even know about jpeg 2000, quite a shame really, because i find jpeg 2000 is very powerful, brilliant quality, i'm too interested how MS's codec will fare against jpeg 2000,

i personally think they will be the same, but Microsoft are playing on the fact that people don't know about jpeg 2000,

JPEG2000 is very expensive to use, has been out for many years and no one uses it. HD Photo will be free.