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Microsoft Move to be the End of JPEG?
jcatcw writes "Microsoft Corp. will submit a new photo format to an international standards organization. The format, HD Photo (formerly known as Windows Media Photo), can accommodate lossless and lossy compression. Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats."
Not going to end jpg - everyone dissatisfied with JPG is already using RAW. Everyone satisified with jpg will stick with jpg.
This is going to enjoy the same sort of limited uptake as jpeg2000 vs jpg, mp4/wma/ogg vs mp3, png vs gif, etc.
Few other things to note:
1) The 'HD' doesn't stand for High Definition, it's just there to get the association with HD TV in consumers minds. *rolls eyes*
2) This technology is patented to the hilt & the licensing terms for the HD Photo Device Porting Kit 1.0 licensing terms specifically exclude copyleft (GPL style) licenses.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
PNG is a replacement for GIF, if anything. JPG files are much smaller than PNG files for typical photographs (though can be smaller for line art and the like), which will always leave JPG as the favorite much like FLAC isn't replacing MP3 anytime soon. The alpha channel in PNG is absolutely a nice perk, but thanks to the dim people at Microsoft never supporting it right until IE7, there wasn't much benefit over using GIF files. (Even though PNG did bi-level transparency just as fine as GIF files - even better, you didn't lose 1 palette entry - but that as an aside.)
If you want a JPG replacement - a la OGG Vorbis over MP3 - try JPEG2000 or the lurawave stuff based on wavelets.
PNG was not supposed to replace JPEG; it was supposed to replace GIF. Unfortunately, thanks to massive delays in getting PNG support correctly working in IE, that never happened. Also, some people still insist they need animated GIFs, which PNG doesn't do (see MNG, which is nowhere). It's sad, as for most file sizes of images appropriate for GIF, PNG was way smaller (unless you get way, WAY small, as in under 150bytes or so (not kilobytes, BYTES). Also, Adobe is still unable to provide decent compression on the PNGs its software generates, so to this day, you need compression tools like pngout or pngcrush (pngout usually produces smaller files). Weird that you can still lossly compress a lossy image, but whatever.
This won't be the end of anything unless it is unemcumbered by patents, and as a previous poster noted, it isn't. So, this is a non-event.
Perhaps the group that came up with PNG can come up with a patent-free replacement for JPEG?
this is the same story with windows media..
the lesson is: the looser the licensing terms (while still maintaining an actual standard), the more widely used it will be.
this means microsft, sony, and real can keep scrambling to their hearts content, but they wont touch a majority share when they treat formats like this.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It applies to the code
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Everyone dissatisfied with JPG is already using RAW"?
I don't know where you're getting that statement from. Everybody dissatisfied with JPG - which I can only imagine stems from the fact that it is lossy compression - is either using:
PNG - because it's common, free to use, etc. etc.
EXR - because it'll allow you to store whatever the hell you want
GIF - because it's ubiquitious and is free to use nowadays (not that too many people cared a few years ago)
'RAW' isn't used by anybody. 'RAW' does not exist. 'RAW' is a collective name for a shitload of formats by a smaller shitload of digital camera companies. And it is never "RAW".. it is never raw data.. it's compressed, stored integratedly or separately, encrypted or not (SONY, among other) and contains a bunch of camera data. The closest thing to a "RAW" format is, say, PFM (portable/pixel float map) or any other format that just stores every color(group) as a bunch of bytes in a long chunk with minimal to zero header/footer information whatsoever that you can only open if you know things like bitdepth and dimension. The closest thing to a unified 'RAW' format for cameras is Adobe's DNG (Digital Negative) - and that's finding slow (no?) adoption as it is. And the closest thing to a unified non-'RAW' format for cameras that isn't lossy compressed is TIFF. None of which you can toss on a website and make viewable in any of the major browsers without plugin installation (if even available!)
That said, I agree with all your other points, especially point 1. Microsoft should be kicked even when down for jumping on the HD bandwagon with a product (or format) that has nothing whatsoever to do with HD.
Some licenses are best meant to preserve the orginal work of art, not enforce the shared derivitaves thereof.
Do you believe that your documentswill be subjected to MS's licensing terms when you save them in word? Of course not.
The GPL does not cover works created using GPLd tools. Learn the difference between code & content.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
For more information on 'HD Photo' (damn I hate that name), check the blog at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/
Hasn't been updated in a good while, but contains plenty of nice information. The various bitdepth storages alone make it an 'interesting' format if nothing else - though I'm sticking with EXR.. just a shame that doesn't offer lossy compression much yet - but then.. that's not its' purpose.
No.
Formerly GNU/Anonymous Coward. This message has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Sure, the GPL FAQ explains this sort of thing:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well, this very web page you're staring at is a good example.
I count 21 PNG files and 2 GIF files.
It is not faster, and in addition, it is much less space-efficient.
I don't know where you're getting that statement from. Everybody dissatisfied with JPG - which I can only imagine stems from the fact that it is lossy compression - is either using: (PNG, GIF, EXR.)
You don't understand what "raw" images are used for. They're used PURELY in the acquisition phase. There isn't a (non-webcam/hideously-dumbed down) camera in the world that records to GIF, I don't know of a single camera on the market that records to PNG, and EXR is a very specialized format used mostly in "film" (ie movie production.) No still digital cameras on the market record to it.
'RAW' isn't used by anybody. 'RAW' does not exist. 'RAW' is a collective name for a shitload of formats by a smaller shitload of digital camera companies.
No, it's not. RAW = Canon's "raw" image format. "Raw" image formats are produced by many higher-end digital cameras. I'm sorry you don't understand the distinction between RAW and raw, but it does make it painfully obvious this isn't your area of expertise. It is mine: I've shot RAW images on my Canon dSLR for fun and profit for several years now. I shoot exclusively in RAW format because of the extra bit depth which makes adjustments much more 'transparent' (a level adjustment won't cause as much problems wit 10-12 bit data as it will with 8 bit, and you also have no compression artifacts.) I archive everything in the original Canon RAW format.
Your characterization that "raw" formats are used by a "shitload of smaller digital camera companies" is also completely wrong. Canon's RAW and Nikons's NEF are by far the largest, most commonly used "raw" formats. Phase1 is probably up there with their digital camera backs. I'm now guessing, but Fuji is probably next (Fuji dSLRs were very popular a few years back, in part because the Fuji SuperCCD was superior to almost everything else on the market at the time), followed by Panasonic/Leica, followed by Pentax.
Many point-and-shoot consumer cameras these days are incapable of shooting in a RAW mode; it's left to the "prosumer" models by most manufacturers.
And it is never "RAW".. it is never raw data.. it's compressed, stored integratedly or separately, encrypted or not (SONY, among other) and contains a bunch of camera data.
It most certainly is raw image sensor data; that's the whole point. "Raw" camera formats all use LOSSLESS compression. Yes, all of them contain incredibly useful EXIF-like data in them. This is not, despite your rant, a negative to anyone I know. Few manufacturers encrypt the data; Nikon encrypts the white balance info on one or two models (which happen to be the several-thousand-dollar professional digital SLR bodies.)
In most cameras (certainly the Canons and Nikons), it is, in fact, "raw"; it represents the closest you can get to the original sensor data, with little or no processing (on Canon cameras, I believe they don't even do thermal noise subtraction prior to writing the RAW file; the file even contains the "dead" area of the sensor used for such compensation), and anywhere from 10 to 12 bits per channel precision. No white balance, brightness/contrast, gamma, or sharpening adjustments are applied before the data is recorded.
Please help metamoderate.
JP2000 was not lossless. It was just giving beter quality than JPEG at the same size ( think MPEG2 -> H.264 ).
c s_file_formats
However JPEG 2000 is a pain to compress and render and is not a 'free format'. (also try to encode/render JPEG2000 images: unless you have a new Intel QuadCore you will feel the suffering of your machine. )
With this HD Format, Microsoft says their algorithm comes close to JPEG2000 quality/size but with a very simple algo.
Also Microsoft is making a lot of effort to standardise their stuff ( they tried first to license it for free, now they go to a standardisation process ). They also have the support of Adobe, which is not a bad thing when talking about image format.
A strong point for HD-Format is that it covers the quality and feature range from JPEG-2000 to TIFF-Losless. So camera manufacturer could benefit from unified chipset that works from pocket camera to SLR. Or a flexible SLR chipset that cover the whole range of quality the user wishes.
But anyway, good source of information as usual: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphi
I agree. In geospatial technologies (e.g. satellite imagery, aerial photography, GIS, topography, etc.) the GeoTIFF format is commonly used for georeferenced raster data. Additionally, the BigTIFF format proposal comes to the rescue to circumvent TIFF's 4 gigs maximum size.
Animoog.org
bzip2 is much more resource-intensive than gzip.
.zip instead of .tgz for the files and someone else recoded that piece.
In 2001 I considered using bzlib to compress some data files in the Brazilian electronic voting system and, since we had to support older, 386-class hardware with little memory, we went the gzip route.
Later some Windows fanboy decided they should use
Consider we are not talking only desktop PCs, but low-end embedded and photographic equipment.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
In theory, yes. There is a byte compression type in the PNG headers.
The PNG people (some of them?) don't want to use this, though, for maximum compatibility of readers and files. I don't have a source handy, so take this with a big grain of salt.
Before slamming the format, please read more about it. Regardless of what you think about Microsoft, I think it has great potential. Some highlights:
Also, take a look at http://labs.live.com/photosynth and http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow. To quote one thing from his blog:
IMHO this seems like a well-balanced format that has most of the advantages of a cornucopia of different formats (JPEG, JPEG 2000, RAW, TIFF) without the corresponding disadvantages. If it's not successful, I at least hope something equivalent is!
"PNG restarts the compression on each row"
That is absolutely not true, and would be madness if it were. From the specification, section 4.5.5:
The rest of your post is suspect now, of course.'RAW' isn't used by anybody. 'RAW' does not exist. 'RAW' is a collective name for a shitload of formats by a smaller shitload of digital camera companies.
No, it's not. RAW = Canon's "raw" image format. "Raw" image formats are produced by many higher-end digital cameras. I'm sorry you don't understand the distinction between RAW and raw, but it does make it painfully obvious this isn't your area of expertise. It is mine: I've shot RAW images on my Canon dSLR for fun and profit for several years now. I shoot exclusively in RAW format because of the extra bit depth which makes adjustments much more 'transparent' (a level adjustment won't cause as much problems wit 10-12 bit data as it will with 8 bit, and you also have no compression artifacts.) I archive everything in the original Canon RAW format.
Since you claim expertise in this area and make some arguments that are, on the surface, convincing I feel it is important to point out mistakes in your arguments. Mistakes that even a relatively raw beginner such as myself are aware of. It appears that you have a very high level understanding of RAW, but to extend this into an understanding of the internals is a dangerous thing to do on Slashdot. First of all, since you speak of Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Pentax 'raw', I think you do understand that each of these formats are unique. The original poster is correct that some manufacturers (e.g. Sony) actually encrypt some of the data in their RAW format so that (for instance) the white balance can only be extracted using proprietary software. It may not be "a Sh!7l0ad of smaller manufacturers" from your point of view, but since I've seen relatively inexpensive Sony, Canon, Pentax and (the dearly departed) Minolta cameras spit out what their marketing material claims is "raw". The bottom line is that RAW is like tiff, only worse in that the data, data representation (byte order...), encoder and container may change from manufacturer to manufacturer. The only thing Canon RAW and Sony RAW are certain to have in common is that their marketing material, instruction book and camera's menu uses the three letters 'R', 'A', and 'W' to represent the name of the format (or in some cases 'r', 'a', 'w'. For a close look at the internals of many raw formats, I suggest you look at the source code to Dcraw. A few other mistakes, even really cheap webcams don't encode to gif (I don't know where that comment came from but they don't, the closed driver software takes the "raw" CMOS/CCD data and encodes it to GIF without letting the user see the raw data. If you're into astrophotography or have used a webcam on an opensource operating system, you'll understand more. Also, the raw file may be the closest consumers can come to the CCD's internal format, but by no means does is it identical to the RAW CCD data as it comes out of the CCD's analog light buckets (or CMOS gates) into the A/D.