Microsoft have announced their new image format which is a competitor to standards like JPEG and PNG.
Windows Media Photo is a new file format for continuous-tone still images that surpasses the limitations of existing image formats.
Windows Media Photo supports a wide range of features including:
Multiple color formats for display or print
Fixed or floating point high dynamic range image encoding
Lossless or high quality lossy compression
Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions
Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode
Windows Media Photo delivers a lightweight, high performance algorithm with a small memory footprint that enables practical, in-device encoding and decoding.
News source: Microsoft
Windows Media Photo is a new file format for continuous-tone still images that surpasses the limitations of existing image formats.
Windows Media Photo supports a wide range of features including:
Multiple color formats for display or print
Fixed or floating point high dynamic range image encoding
Lossless or high quality lossy compression
Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions
Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode
Windows Media Photo delivers a lightweight, high performance algorithm with a small memory footprint that enables practical, in-device encoding and decoding.
News source: Microsoft
Windows Media Photo License
XPS implementations of Windows Media Photo require the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit. Contact Microsoft at wmla@microsoft.com with XPS WMPhoto License in the Subject field to obtain the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit.
XPS implementations of Windows Media Photo require the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit. Contact Microsoft at wmla@microsoft.com with XPS WMPhoto License in the Subject field to obtain the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit.
1) It has "Windows" in the name
2) Microsoft probably will find a way to make it proprietary or otherwise crappy on other platforms
3) I smell patents and dubious licensing.
What's wrong with PNG?
But I agree that this is not necessary, unless it intends to replace JPEG, in which case it must be open for all to freely use.
That's just like that XML based printing junk they're trying to push. What's wrong with the globally understood and accepted postscript and PDF formats?
Everytime they do that, I feel pain for the devs on alternate platform that must reverse engineer the format to get it to work. And once that done, people claim it's "cross platform because it works on such and such platform!".
Bleh.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,...,1967918,00.asp
"Windows Media Photo will allow users to correct, render and print photos in half the size a comparable JPEG requires, Crow said. As a result, images will retain more shadow and highlight detail, even when sent via e-mail, instant-messaging and other communications channels; and will require significantly less space for storage, he told WinHEC attendees."
"Windows Media Photo "features 24:1 compression while retaining far more detail than JPEG or JPEG 2000 formats," blogged Weinberg. "Microsoft is shooting to have higher quality than typical digital cameras while at a 12:1 level (most cameras use 6:1, so that's a very good thing).""
"In order to make use of XPS, Microsoft's XML Paper Specification display/printing format that Microsoft is pushing as an alternative to PostScript and PDF, developers need to use the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit, according to Microsoft. "
BTW, as I understand it, Microsoft needs to pay a license to use JPEG, so I don't see that this can be seen as more proprietary. Just some people will not like it because its Microsoft
Last edited by brianshapiro on 26 May 2006 - 17:50
Just some people will not like it because its Microsoft.
Partly true. I will most likely not like it because Microsoft has a blatant history of pushing proprietary formats that can't really be easily ported to other platforms.
"Microsoft is only offering a license for Windows Media Photo as a component of XPS. Information on licensing Windows Media Photo for other applications will be provided in the future."
JPEG is not subject to these restrictions JPEG.org or DigitalPreservation.gov
So, yeah... Currently, WMP is much more restrictive. I will hold this position until their license changes.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,...,1967918,00.asp
"Windows Media Photo will allow users to correct, render and print photos in half the size a comparable JPEG requires, Crow said. As a result, images will retain more shadow and highlight detail, even when sent via e-mail, instant-messaging and other communications channels; and will require significantly less space for storage, he told WinHEC attendees."
"Windows Media Photo "features 24:1 compression while retaining far more detail than JPEG or JPEG 2000 formats," blogged Weinberg. "Microsoft is shooting to have higher quality than typical digital cameras while at a 12:1 level (most cameras use 6:1, so that's a very good thing).""
After MS's claims about WMA I say I'll believe it when I see it.
That's new to me. I still grit my teeth and make funny noises whenever I have to open one of these under OS X or Linux.
They play, sort of. But not with open codecs. With junk like win32 codecs passed through wrappers. And WMV9 will not play properly most of the time.
It's a proprietary format, not open...
Here is a sample PNG picture found in a google image search: http://www.larsson-folger.de/anna/img/CRodrigoWall.png
It is 848 KB (869,032 bytes)
Compare to JPEGs I saved at different 'quality' settings:
100% http://markjensen.googlepages.com/CRodrigoWall_100.jpg 422 KB (432,302 bytes)
90% http://markjensen.googlepages.com/CRodrigoWall_90.jpg 143 KB (146,636 bytes)
75% http://markjensen.googlepages.com/CRodrigoWall_75.jpg 82.4 KB (84,467 bytes)
50% http://markjensen.googlepages.com/CRodrigoWall_50.jpg 52.2 KB (53,496 bytes)
Now, for web pages 50% may be fine, and 10 JPG pictures can be viewed/downloaded in the time it took that one PNG. Even the 100% setting gets you a 2 to 1 advantage over the PNG when it comes to filesize/bandwidth.
Too many people use Mac/Linux Firefox/Opera etc....
Sorry but that's what... 85% of the people using Internet?
Sorry but that's what... 85% of the people using Internet?
And that 85% won't be able to view WMPs unless Microsoft succeeds in getting that population to update to IE7, or roll out a patch for IE6 (which I doubt).
But anyway, this Windows media photo idea sounds like nothing more than vendor lock-in to me. By making Paint, Word and IE 7 save all images in WMP format by default, they'll get some marketshare. Then people will start posting these pictures to websites and guess what? It will require Windows to view.
Using Firefox? No sorry, no WMPs for you. Using Mac? Linux? Nope. Use IE7 and Windows. Because that's all the world needs. </sarcasm>
Funny tho' how image compression is one of those things I never think about these days. I've just gotten so used to jpeg for space, gif for animation, bmp for lossless. Man I'm living in the past.
The "half the size a comparable JPEG" claim sounds like bs. Why must companies put out such marketing trash when it comes to audio/video/(and now image) compression? I dont like to use a product that insults my intelligence.
We knew it was coming. They did it for video, audio, office file formats, and now images! They have to have their hands in everything just so they can screw everyone else over.
</rant>
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