Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's HD Photo to Become JPEG Standard?
Mortimer.CA writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has submitted their HD Photo to the JPEG committee: 'Microsoft's ongoing attempt to establish its own photo format as a JPEG alternative (and potential successor) took another step forward today when the JPEG standards group agreed to consider HD Photo (originally named Windows Media Photo) as a standard. If successful, the new file standard will be known as JPEG XR.' Microsoft has made a 'commitment to make its patents that are required to implement the specification available without charge.' While JPEG 2000 exists, HD Photo has several advantages (not the least of which is a lot less CPU power is needed). Is this a big of an issue as ODF/OOXML?"
I can't for my life figure out how Microsoft or why Microsoft introduces evil into this format and standard, other than Microsoft's track record. Unfortunately, that is sufficient... I'd vote no on any of their proposals.
The future and potential for photography is huge. There are:
Microsoft makes their promise to make this free. Somehow, that just rings a tad hollow. Must we continue to be the Charlie Brown to Microsoft's Lucy?
So, what you are saying is that Microsoft is playing the same game as GPL3, except to their advantage, not FOSS or GPL3 or ......
Begun the license wars have.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If there are restrictions, Microsoft's HD photo will go the way of the GIF format.
Websites still use gif quite a bit. And the patents have expired, so there's no real reason not to anymore...Personally, I prefer png, but for some reason png hasn't really caught on. I imagine because graphic design schools break web graphics up into 2 categories, full-color jpg, and line-art gif.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
There's PLENTY wrong with Microsoft spearheading a format and being very active in getting it consumed as a world standard. We'd do well to avoid it since it's basically steps two and three of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish." Why should they embrace something when the rest of the industry will handle the leg work of getting the Embrace phase down?
It's bad on it's merits alone. FUDing it up doesn't help anyone.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Taking a quick glance at Microsoft's HDPhoto standard it looks like it is not really suitable for capturing raw image data for cameras.
In a digital camera, a pixel is red, green, blue and sometimes additional colors laid out in a pattern that can differ from camera to camera. A pixel is not RGB (unless it's a Fovon sensor), so standard lossless formats like PNG or TIFF won't work. HDPhoto supports N color channels and more than 8 bits per color, but I do not see support for the raw CCD data, which is usually not RGB, but R, G, or B (sometimes with additional colors).
I like to preserve my pictures in RAW format since as time goes by, the algorithms to convert the image to a RGB image suitable for displaying keep improving. Also, when editing my photos, some of the processing is done on the raw data before converting it to RGB. Raw data helps for things like noise filtering, for example, since the noise filtering software can be aware of the camera's CCD properties (Noise Ninja, for example, has profiles for my camera at different ISO settings).
The only problem with current raw photos is that each manufacturer seems to have their own format which is incompatible with other manufacturers, or even incompatible between different cameras. It would be nice if they could standardize on something like OpenRAW.
Now, as much as I dislike Microsoft, I think this could be good for regular photos since the compression is about as good as Jpeg2000 (assuming Microsoft isn't spreading FUD) but with a much faster encoding/decoding speed. This could also be a good format for most people taking pictures (who are happy with JPEG).
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Yes, mutually understood usage eventually becomes the standard. This, however, is not a reason to simply throw up our arms and say "oh well, popular usage eventually becomes the standard, LOLz!" It's a reason to recognize the fact that words and phrases already have commonly accepted documented meanings, and that if we wish to be understood clearly, we would do well to follow that established usage until it limits our ability to express things.
Abandoning the nuance of "to beg the question" in order to turn it into an ugly synonym for "to raise the question" doesn't expand our expressiveness. It doesn't create a new, useful sense for the phrase. It only discards the accepted meaning of the phrase, offers no replacement, and in the end, dilutes the expressiveness of our language.
As you point out, it is popular usage that will eventually decide the issue. That is all the more reason that we should actively resist those who would throw meaning in the garbage out of a simple unfamiliarity with the words they use. Teaching others how we use our language is an important tool for preserving its expressiveness.
And this was known (because I posted it) back when PNG was becoming a new standard. The design of PNG would even make it easy to have a rudimentary animation facility (that's all that would have been needed to bump GIF). Yet it wasn't done. What a missed opportunity. What a historical screwup. Well, OK, it wasn't your fault, I presume. Do you know whose fault it is?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
For the record, JPEG2000 != JPEG. Just wanted to make sure everyone knew that, because from some of the comments it seems clear that many people don't.
But yeah, good for microsoft. Yeah, I said it. On slashdot, no less, and I mean it.
The trouble is that jpeg2000 is a patent minefield, and no one has made any promise not to sue or charge fees on it. Which is why, despite being dramatically better technically, we are stuck with blocky JPEGs. Microsoft's proposal is better than jpeg2000, because the IP is all in one place, and they are interested in giving it away for free (or so it seems).
So, to sum up, technically HD Photo is about the same as JPEG2000, both of which beat JPEG.
But licensing wise, JPEG > HD Photo > JPEG2000
So, this is a death knell for JPEG2000, which is a good thing. Of course, it'd be even better if there was a good patent-free solution for a next generation format, but I suspect just about everyone will continue using JPEG anyway.