From what it sounds like the image format is of better quality, but there are lots of other things that have changed since JPG came out.

If they can:
1. make this new format virus proof
2. add the ability to add tags to the image
3. add OCR information

In this way images will take a giant leap forward. Viruses seem to be the next big issue with images. Furthermore, if become searchable instead of having to tag an image externally that would be a true evolution. I can see how OCR would be automated, but if they can figure out how to make it so that the image itself can identify the subject matter and this can be double checked and edited by the photographer - then you are talking about something special.

I think it is a great thing that Microsoft is challenging the supremacy of JPG. They are starting to act like innovators again - instead of monopolists. I think it is great!

samfind
http://samfind.com

Jpeg isn't sooo bad, i mean sure if you use really high compression, then it lookes like Robocop did something naughty on grandma's photo.

Wow! that was alot of reading to catch up on! So i think I counted atleast a dozen different formats listed besides the new one from MS in the course of reading all of the posts (i also know of a few that were not listed). Now im not a blood and guts software tech guy, but after realizing the number of options out there i thought my head would spin off! And that is what will happen to consumers when this gets released to them. In the face of all of these formats and the introduction of a new one do you know what the average consumer will do? stick with what they know, JPEG. It like a big sercurity blanket that consumers have had for years, whether its the best or not is irrellivant. Just look how long it took to kill the 3.5 floppy for petes sake! Heck some computers are still are produced with them even in the face of larger HDD, email, and flash drives. People stick with what they know works and will upgrade only when they have no choice. With that i think this new format will be in the waste bin in no time.

this is crap. what will happen when camera companies start using this format? we will need to use microsoft code to read the images. and thus making them incompatable with linux and any non-microsoft suported os. everyone i beg you to boycott this format. how can they call this a "standard" when it is not "standardized" and "open-source".

You knuckle head "thebinaryman" - linux isn't exactly "standardized" or compatible across the board. What do you want for someone elses money?

I guess this doesn't exist then.

http://freestandards.org/en/LSB

A new fight with the Doj and EU is coming !!
Microsoft the cash-maker !

http://www.lapytsh.com

I think the reason why this is very important to MS is bcos they can cut down on costly patent licences for JPEG.

Nope, it's important to MS because they want to dominate all formats. When you have the format (software) you can control the hardware. And that's how B.G. became the riches geek on the planet.

looks like they've refused to pay JPEG lisences, and now it looks like they won't have to worry anyway.
http://www.betanews.com/...ight/1148664223#c273474

TAGS:
I haven't read the specs but I hope that they include the ability to easily tag pictures for searching. That is one thing that JPG and other formats are really missing.
Programs such as ACDSEE enable you to add TAGS to easily find pictures that relate to person's, places, time periods etc but it does this by generating a main file. However, if your picture is moved or renamed or your delete the original file all your work is gone (hours and hours).
Integrated tagging is sorely needed and I hope the new format has it.

JPG won't be replaced very quickly. However, converting formats should be very simple and the co-existence of formats should be fairly painless.

The good news is: Yes, Microsoft's spec does include tagging capability.

The bad news is: It's the same tagging capability which has already been built into JPEG and TIFF. You may not have realized it, but ACDSee supports EXIF attributes in JPEG files, in addition to ACDSee's own tagging storage. The problem with EXIF is that it's one of those "standards" which lots of products pretend to implement but nobody does it exactly the same way. For mainstream users, the lack of widespread compliance has rendered EXIF mostly useless, which is why ACDSee and other products have implemented proprietary schemes.

The TIFF 6.0 spec also provides fields for tagging images, but this portion of the spec is "optional" which generally means that nobody really implements it. I think Microsoft has only included these tagging features as a way of preserving existing tags when JPEG and TIFF files are converted into Microsoft's new format, so that you could export an image back to JPEG/TIFF and not lose the original tags. Although you could theoretically take advantage of them for searching and organizing, you would face the same issues that prevent JPEG-EXIF from being useful today.

I built an image format utilizing LZMA compression that results on average in files 1/4 the size of PNG files. Someone build a 12bit image format so I can sue them! :D

Reading this and the "PUBPAT Scores Win in JPEG Patent Fight" article, one thing is becoming very clear--another anti-trust lawsuit against MS cometh. (Begin sarcasm) Now they will integrate a graphics format too! Not fair! (end sarcasm)

However, why will this new format be a legal issue and .bmp files are not? How come Adobe doesn't sue over Ms Paint? Because they have been around since Windows 3.x and perhaps earlier, and back in the early 1990s people had this mysterious property called "character" that is an unknown entity in the modern world.

Yeah, Just like they Try to kill Mp3 with the Wma format- Now here it comes again- they are trying to make Everything Microsoft- dam-
wmp = windows media player
and now is windows media photo-
Who the hell makes up this names

The same guy who gave came up with Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. You tell someone to open Windows Explorer and they instinctly head to the big E. sheesh

Ahh, but now there's Windows Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer(6.0-)!

Fortunately wma is not widely used, and I think is a quality matter: wma quality is terrible.
Many named windows features/components are plainly copied, but they still didn't paid enough atention to the name make up for the stolen products.
In the case of windows media photo it may be for iPhoto (Apple) but I guess that windozePhoto or wchoto could be too much.

Woohoo... another format i'm going to have to convert to, for people at work.

is this proof that ms decides what you use?

...

"You really can't see anything
good coming out of MS, can you?"

...

The PC Rat is NOT a Microsoft-hater ! Have in fact
defended Microsoft in the past.

Use WinXP on three home computers, and intend to
upgrade to WinVista next year.

But just because Bro. Rat ain't the anti-Microsoft
Taliban DON'T mean he uncritically accepts all
they do.

They have ~serious~ shortcomings and aren't above
criticism.
...

The Computer Rodent

...

Talking about yourself in the 3rd person??? Very Cliche.

I'm the same as Mr. Rodent. Microsoft has made some mistakes (often :( ) but some things (like Windows Explorer, MS Paint, and even the Explorer shell) are done perfectly.

"Use WinXP on three home computers, and intend to
upgrade to WinVista next year."
I use XP on one less :( but I will upgrade if my PC and Laptop support it. Probably not straight away, give them time to "bug out" :P (my way of saying get all the bugs out :P)

what if the whole world become free? would it be better?

Exactly, that is the whole problem with free software. People often consider it immediately better, and become blind to other COMMERCIAL software, simply because of the fact that its free. Forget the fact that the commercial counterparts run a lot faster, have more features (even thou not everyone will use them, but if you do need them they are there), and are far better supported than any of the freeware apps. Dont get me wrong, this isnt a generalization, because some freeware software does surpass its counterparts in functionality, but in my experiences, free automatically means better in the eyes of most people.

A lot of these free software supporters often also cry when a program isnt open source, when half of them wouldnt be able to code a fix for an open source app, or contribute to its CVS library let alone understand the source code they are clammering for.

Wrong, Wrong and Wrong.

Open Source verse commerical is a matter of preference, nothing more. Do you want to pay 600 to 1000 USD for Microsoft Word? Or do you want Open Office for free?

Do you want to put up with MSN Messenger (YIM and AIM are the same)'s ads or do you want to use Gaim for free? Do you want to spend 300 USD on Adobe Photoshop, or do you want to use GIMP for free.

Keep in mind that:
Microsoft Office/OpenOffice
Gaim/MSN
Gimp/Photoshop

are all evenly matched in features, usablity and speed. Through Openoffice, gimp and Gaim are cross platform... Go figure.

At one time GIMP did not support the industry CMYK standard. Has this changed? I had looked at the app in the past but while I like the GUI it didn't support CMYK or Photoshop plug-ins. If things haven't changed then it's not an alternative.

There is experimental partial support for CMYK through plugins although the development for native support is quite slow.
http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml

CMYK support is a big deal, but only if you are a professional. Hobbiest / novice / home users will have more functionallity with GIMP than they will ever need IMHO.

Professionals should buy photoshop, no question.

Some people aren't as wealthy as we are, so FREE is sometimes better than nothing at all or worse piracy.

I wouldn't know, I only use MSPaint *blush*

MSPaint is perfet for my needs, so I've never brought PS. I've used it at school and I got Gimp on Linux... but I never use it. Don't like either of them to tell the truth... But there is always an alternative to everything.

Question: What is CMYK anyway?

To add to what fewt said, CMYK is used for four color printing process. Computer displays use the RGB color model. Creating an image in RGB and then printing in CMYK will produce inconsistent colors.

Some comparisons/benchmarks should be made since Jpeg2000 has already been there for quite sometime; unless the difference is alot and this is really "free", atleast I wouldn't adopt it

I want to see the result of the new Microsoft Standard but does Microsoft will have some new problems with US justice !

http://www.lapytsh.com

In MS eyes, no point in making it free, since JPEG isn't free either, now is it... So instead of paying licensing to the JPEG group (yeah I know, you "PIN number" crybabies) everyone can and will pay to license the new wonderful MS format (which you know..did probably cost them mucho dinero in R&D to produce).

No digital camera maker in their right mind will continue using JPEG six months after Vista is out (it simply WON'T SELL). They'll go with this WDP or possibly JPEG2000 or possibly some other competitor which suprisingly hasn't showed up "for practice" in the past 7 years or so... Basically what I'm telling you right now is that FINALLY that inefficient format (outdated in 2000 mind you), JPEG, will VERY SOON be dead. And that is just wonderful news.

I don't remember when has MS ever sue someone? They are always the one being sue. Please don't mix MS with patent trolls.

Six months? Heh, I think you're dreaming or taking some sort of illicit pharmacology. Unless it's easily viewable (i.e. non Vista, not to mention Apple) then it won't be readily adopted. As for size of media, it's largely becoming irrelevant with broadband (and higher) use so common. Looking through the photography groups that I'm part of it was largely panned, mostly since everyone uses RAW for shooting. I want every bit of information that my camera captured, I don't want to throw it away. For amateur use it will probably see some use, just like you'll find a little bit of .wmv intermixed with 264 and MPEG flavours. Right now the trend is for greater compatibility with image formats, unless it's easily portable the usefulness is greatly reduced.

WINDOWS Media Photo isn't going to work, for that very reason. Windows. Any format needs to be cross platform. Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, whatever :P

Why does people always have to complain about everything microsoft does, even without trying it? I am sick and tired of reading how MS is bad, in every kind of way. I am just waiting for Mac to get so popular that people start suing Apple for putting Safari in all their computers...

What the hell!?!? There already IS Jpeg2000 wich few times better than Jpeg! Why we should use anything like that from M$? They're trying to f**k us again!

There is very little support for Jpeg2k. If MS shipped a COM library that supported WMP then it would get quick adoption. Especial if IE displayed it.

Does Jpeg2000 support transparency on the web like with GIF and PNG?
I do like PNG files for photo/text combo images, but they are VERY large compared to JPEG.
I wonder if they could add lossy encoding to PNG to compete better with JPEG. Is that possible? PNG has no licensing issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...ng#Comparison_with_JPEG

Think of Jpeg2000 as the Sony SACD format(excluding the price factor)--good features, nicely done, but no real mainstream support.

An easy way to boost acceptance of a new file format (assuming they make it open source) would be to jump into digital photography. Send out the algorithm to Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji, etc, and ask them to include it in their new cameras. This will get software developers interested in making supporting programs, and will spread media in this format through to your average consumer.

The potential is there, it's just up to Microsoft on how they license it.

I would love to see MS give it out for free and maybe then the adoption of a new movie format other than that dang Quicktime. Another useless piece of software that I refuse to keep on my PC.
I would like to use the movie function of my camera, but don't want the Quicktime program. Quicktime Alternative is a great program, but you have to install it on all the machines you want to view the movie on.
Since cameras are creating pictures with higher and higher resolutions, the space on our computers are growing slimmer and this technology is needed. When sending emails or documents with graphics inside, this technology should make for a great alternative with many benefits.

Are you insane, the QT alternative sucks royal. It fails to play the majority of files. QT on the otherhand it a great piece of software, especially the $30 pro version. Working in "layers" within this app is powerful. The adoption of MP4/AAC/H.264 encoding is amazing.

Space growing slimmer?

Hard drives are SO incredibly cheap and it's so dead simple to add one to today's computers. I might understand your argument 11 years ago. My first 1.08gig drive went for over $600 (and took no minor bit of time to install on Win3.11), you can get drives for less than a buck a gig today!

And after one year or so, we would hear from the news that a certain company sues M$ of patent infringement on a certain algorithm or whatever.... and the M$'s response to the customers would be.... "We at M$ are very very sorry because we could no longer give WMP for free....

I based this speculation on the M$ history of computing.

lol...that's so untrue...

The use of the dollar sign replacing the S in the MS acronym to imply that they are money grubbing is hilarious!

Actually, if you recall MS started charging last for MSDOS which is so common for portable drives. This after letting it go for free for years.

Great idea, but they have to impliment it on a grand scale. Not just with Vista. They need thousands of programs to support it plus dvd players as well. I would love to save the space on my porn collection. You laugh but it would save me 50gigs or more.

No I don't laugh! It is a great idea because I have followed and collected models' photos over the years that add up to over 600G. Cut that in half and all the sudden I just gained another huge HD of space.

How about JPEG2000?

"You may review these Materials only (a) as a reference to assist You in planning and designing Your product, service or technology ("Product") to interface with a Microsoft product, specification, service or technology ("Microsoft Product") as described in these Materials; and (b) to provide feedback on these Materials to Microsoft."

Hmm, this looks like you can only use this spec to build an image viewer that works on a Microsoft platform.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphoto.mspx

Lost interest right there.

and (b) to provide feedback on these Materials to Microsoft.

While your comments rarely fail to amuse, inform, or baffle, the above feedback regarding cross-platform compatibility would probably be much more effective directed where the quote you posted directed. I highly doubt many MS lackeys read BetaNews. :D

Have you even tried to understand what they are stating in that "agreement"? Obviously not!

I do not know you from Adam, but you are taking this out of context.

Well, that may be however it's really about which context MS's law team will take.

Seriously, no one else's opinion matters and I'll err on the I'm not getting sued over using some new image format side thanks.

In general:
JPEG, WMP --> Lossy
PNG, GIF, TIFF --> Lossless
WMF, EPS --> Vector

These 3 things are meant for totally different applications.

Actually I've just had a quick read of the spec sheet. Basically WDP (is actually the file extension) is an implementation of TIFF. They are promising compression / quality results similar to JPEG2000 with computational / memory requirements of JPEG. It comes in two forms Lossy and Lossless (lossless is 2.5 times smaller then uncompressed) but not Vector as it only has a Rastor implementation.

thanks for the correction. :)

I forsee the general populus mistaking these for "Windows Media Player" files.

No, not really. Knowing that the extensions for know file types is turned off, most will not even notice it if Camera Manufacturers adopt it or if it is installed on a Windows XP or later machine. All they see is the name of the file and they double click it.

Good!! More standard, and more competition!

I'm happy with PNG as much as the next guy, but if a better, more efficient alternative like this one comes along, I'm thrilled for it. Better quality files in less file size... sounds great, get it on! :)

Why bother with something that's certain to be proprietary?

MNG/JNG are already out there.

amen.

we'll have to wait and see on that one.

MNG & JNG are not superior in compression ratio compared to JPEG. They just add more features to existing PNG & JPEG formats.

The format that this article talks about is an improvement on the COMPRESSION RATIO, which is a much harder thing to do by order of magnitude.

Could lossy encoding be added to the PNG format to compete with JPEG better? I do like the transparency support in PNG.

...

Microsoft has a long history of coming up
with these things, pushing them for a while,
then losing interest.

Nothing will come of this.

...

The Computer Rodent

...

Only if people like you continue to criticize them one minute for not being innovative, and then turning around to criticize their innovations as boring, inferior, or proprietary.

You really can't see anything good coming out of MS, can you?

C'mon. Be objective. For once.

Kid-stuff!

How about criticizing their non-innovations as being unnecessary, as well as proprietary?

There are other image formats out there which make this newest non-innovation redundant, at best.

i wasn't aware there was a good alternative to a jpg that had universal browser support. hopefully the major browsers/applications pick up support for this if it's a worthwhile format.

he's got a very thick head. i suggest C4 instead of words.

WooHoo! This means more exploits, patches and fixes for another proprietary format from M$!

Thanks for proving my point to PCRat.

Exactly.

Unless this is made an open standard, it will fail. Nobody wants ANOTHER file format, that only works with Microsoft's apps...

Learn to read before offering your ramblings...

"Weinberg further recommended that Microsoft not attempt to make money off the format, and rather freely license it to its competitors. He also suggested such a plan could help adoption of other Windows Media-based multimedia formats in the end."

Just because he recommended it doesn't mean MS will do it. I recommended MS create a standards compliant browser in 1997, I haven't see it happen yet.

Microsoft need to make some phone calls to Mozilla, Apple, and other companies ... and perhaps make this open source for this to a be a wonderful thing. As it stands, .jpg and .png have a far reaching dominance on the web...

mjm01010101: PNG is the replacement for GIF, not JPG. PNG works very well for 256-color images and transparencies, but comparitively does not beat JPG compression for larger files. PNG2000 isn't very well accepted.

I've had very good experience with PNG. They produce small files with No loss when converting from raw or BMP. I use PNG and JPG combo for all my websites and have had no complaints

PNG in my experiences works very very nicely regardless of what it's used for. Every PNG I've ever made has had higher compression and higher quality compared to GIF and JPG equivalents.

PNG is great, as is SVG. I've been really happy with PNG for images and SVG for vector stuff.

Every PNG I've ever made has had higher compression and higher quality compared to GIF and PNG equivalents.

Thought you might want to read that sentence one more time... Not really seeing how PNGs can have higher compression and better quality than... um... PNGs. ;)

You might want to read that one more time. You missed the key word "equivalents".

Thanks, lol...

blah

This will work much better than the WMF files it's had so many issues with in the past, right?

And yeah, PNG is working fine...I really don't see the need for this.

Adobe does...

WMF is a whole different beast.... it was designed more than a decade ago for clipart files. It was allowed to create lossless graphics by executing commands and literally re-drawing a graphic at any size, and it never worried about compression, hence why WMF files are generally very large.

You'll have to trust me on this one... I've seen its guts. It's actually a quite capable format. In fact, even early on I'd say it's visually as accurate as jpg2k, and still it's smaller in file size.

It would get a HUGE endorsement by me if they a) allow it to be a free, open standard, and b) if they HAVE to use DRM in it, that it make sense, and be the exception (i.e. people selling images).

The biggest benefit is not so apparent. If you have a digital camera, for instance, and it writes jpg now, it's got to use battery to write all that data. If you only wrote half the data and still got a better quality picture, you're not using as much battery, and thus your camera lasts longer.

Hopefully MS management makes the right call on this. The schemes it uses to compress are really quite ingenius.

My camera writes .tif, thankyouverymuch. ;)

lol , I think mine does to.

There's a lossless mode that's got great efficiencies over tif.

On my Camera? Don't think so.

I *do* need to upgrade though. It's just a crap 3.1MP.

My Camera does RAW, compression is of little interest to me. I'll have to wait and see.

Won't be much choice. It seems that there's heavy industry support -- and for the same reasons. Better battery life, higher quality, and "it just works" feel.

Yeah, just like using WMA or AAC instead of MP3 gives you better battery life on a portable digital player... Oh wait... it doesn't... and actually it -reduces- your battery life since it needs more CPU power to decode.

As a general rule, better compression systems need more CPU.

And it's sad to see how people seem to think that MS invented something "genious" here. There's nothing extrordinary to write an image compression scheme that's better than JPEG. There are dozens of already existing formats that result in better compression at half the size of JPEGs.

MS make it sound like a breakthrough and as usual some people believe it, but it's not a breakthrough at all.

Should we get a better standard to replace JPEG and PNG? Sure, nobody disagrees about that. But should this image standard be owned by the dominating OS maker? I don't think so...

PNG is the replacement for jpg, and it's doing quite nicely, thanks!

That and WMP probably won't work with FF and Opera... meaning it'd be a lousy web format.

PNG is *NOT* a replacement for JPG. When dealing with images like photos, JPG files with reasonable compression are significantly smaller than equivalent PNG files.

It is a replacement for any graphics format that a PNG creator decides to use it for.

Any format can qualify as a replacement for any other format when the end user decides that it fits a need.

I happen to use PNGs for everything from icons to screenshots.

That will depend on FF and Opera deciding to embrace the format or not.

"Weinberg further recommended that Microsoft not attempt to make money off the format, and rather freely license it to its competitors. He also suggested such a plan could help adoption of other Windows Media-based multimedia formats in the end."

The OP said "the replacement", not "a replacement".

I repeat: PNG is not *the* replacement for JPG.

I too use PNGs for many things. But as appropriate. Not as a panacea.

Microsoft has rarely, if ever, heeded such recommendations. We have 25 years of history to prove that one.

If ms releases it as freely available and publicly documents all aspects of the specification, they may be given a hearing. Otherwise, ms and their offerings are 100% irrelevant.

That could be called a reasonably correct assessment; however, in those instances wherein one needs PNG-like alpha, a high compression ratio; and lossy compression can be tolerated; JNG is the way to go.

-Snerk!!-

I dunno, but there is plenty of prior history that points to MS NOT freely licensing this.

Nope
http://en.wikipedia.org/...ng#Comparison_with_JPEG

Now if PNG had lossy encoding then maybe so.

agreed... formats need to be free, or have the possibility of being made interoperable through reasonable licensing. One such example is mp3. It does so by collecting it's royalty fees as a small percentage of sales revenue.

By interoperatble I mean Opera,Firefox and GPL Linux vendors being able to support this format;not just digital camera vendors and application vendors that develope solely for MS.

We've also got to think about the support in Mac OS X and other *Nix systems, because the usage share in both these operating systems is increasing every day. Microsoft wont rule the PC world forever, just like Apple wont lead the MP3 player industry forever.

What ever happened to the MNG format. They've been talking about it for years now and should end all of this debate when/if it ever comes out