Comments on: Microsoft shows off JPEG rival

New Windows Media Photo format promises images that offer better quality at half the size of JPEG files.
Special coverage: Windows in view

[UnnDunn]

And the Microsoft bashers come out yet again...

It amazes me how many people are super-critical of this format merely because it's from Microsoft. Can Microsoft do ANYTHING right, in your eyes?

Personally, I have no problem with this format as long as they don't position it as a Web format. Microsoft is finally supporting PNG properly, so hopefully PNG will become the dominant Web image format, as it should be.

[rmiecznik]

OS X and Vista

After seeing some pics of Vista on the web, it's starting to look more and more like OS X as far as the sleep graphics. Always copying.

If MS thinks Apple is a joke with only 3% of the market, why copy ? someone they laught at ?

Ahhhh :- ) there you go.

[jeffhesser]

hey stuge

if you want to talk about vista post to a relevant article. and I am pretty sure there is more to Vista then the surface there buddy. the fact that the appearance is all you see means you should stick with your OS X and enjoy the ignorance, I hear it's bliss.

[Riyan.M]

Apple checks on Microsoft at WinHEC

This is not the right place to discuss the two OS, but since you started, let me add this too.

http://news.com.com/2061-10794_3-6076237.html

"Among the more than 3,500 attendees at Microsoft's annual event for hardware experts are some perhaps unexpected visitors: Apple Computer employees. The Cupertino, Calif., company has four people at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle this week, checking out what Microsoft is up to."

[Arbalest05]

Costs will determine the success

JPEG, the current and near universal standard costs nothing to use and incorporate into your product. It is popular, well understood and supported by every digital camera maker and is supported on every current desktop OS. Microsoft's will have to match or better JPEG feature for feature or it will fail in the market place.

If it is hobbled by some funky new DRM, it will probably fail.

[airbns]

Monopoly Trumps Market Economics

You're forgetting that monopoly trumps market economics. And, conveniently, MS has one. Or at least near enough to one to still be able to dictate a lot of what happens in the market place.

[xyzzxy]

as a photographer I think this is promising

As far as I can tell the spec. is open
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphoto.mspx
This is much better than jpeg2000 which has died due to licensing issues. From a prelim. look this looks to have more features than j2000 with none of the royalty issues.

PNG, TIFF, RAW, DNG, EXR, jpeg are not real options for sharing 16bit or hdr images. There is no "standard" way of doing this, I'm happy that someone is proposing something. The best these other "standards" do is lossless compression. I think the ability to lightly compress wider dynamic range images is a huge feature.

For web delivery of large images I'd love to see images with more dynamic range than jpeg at half the download size. If they can deliver on this and let anyone implement it then it seems like goodness to me.

[ewelch]

You're mistaken

You are mistaken on several points.

TIF is just fine for sharing 16 bit files. They're big, for sure, but
with LZW lossless compresion it makes the files quite a bit
smaller. Especially if you use the ProPhoto RGB color space, you
have all the 16 bit quality you could possibly want.

RAW is better for storage.

But I see promise in this new format, if it's free. Microsoft is still
trying to cash in on FAT. What makes people think they'll give
this new (horrible name) format away for free? I really have my
doubts.

And if it's not Mac compatible, it's dead in the water. Those who
think Apple's 5 percent market share (it's gone up folks) is
reflected in the pro photo market, you are sadly mistaken.
Adobe gets almost half their Photoshop revenue from Mac users.

[DrDolitl]

They'll never learn.

Once again Microsoft thinks it knows best. This attempt to force a new standard will fail like all the others. They'll never learn.

[jeffachan]

RAW and TIFF the only way to go for photogs

While I can see some advantages in a new format to replace JPEG, any pro photographers would shoot and archive in RAW, save edits in TIFF (for lossless files) and then convert to some small file format for email distribution or web posting.

[Qsan]

Maybe A Tool to Cut in Professional Digital Image Processing Market for MS?

Look out! Adobe.

[cwhissen]

(sound of frustration)

Sometimes these talback posts are informative. Sometimes, they make you wonder at the density of CNET's users.

Some points:

1) Why does one assume that MS will put DRM on this format? DRM is necessary to protect digital rights of products - music, film, etc. Photogrpahers can simply post there work online in an unusable-for-print size and not worry about people selling there work. (So someone steals it for their desktop wallpaper, big deal)

1B) So what if it does have DRM? More likely it would be handled the way AAC is handled. AAC in one use is a music compression format that allows people to rip/create their own files. AAC in the hands of iTunes is a restrictive format that keeps people from (theoretically) abusing files that were purchased. If MS put DRM into the format, it would probably work the same way.

2) Will it work on Macs/Linux/UNIX/Amiga/Atari 7800? Well, other than the two put in for an obvious - if poor - attempt at humor, why wouldn't it? Like someone else pointed out, WMA and WMV are playable on Mac and other OS's. Why wouldn't this be just as universal?

3)Pro-photogs won't use it. Bull. there are still many photographers using RAW, but realistically, this is only needed for large format projects - like billboards. And even then not always. It was less than a decade ago that no professional photgrapher worth his salt would even use digital. Film was a must for quality and archiving. Now, film is practically a quaint affectation. Everyone from photojournalists to wedding photographers uses digital. If, a big IF, this format offers improvement people will use it. People like to hate MS, but they use whatever works best cheapest.

4)Cost. I'm not going to reiterate the many arguments of openformat and licensing. I'll just add that MS is not dumb. If they want to make something a success, they give it away. Once people are used to getting it for free, they're not going to pay for it. When was the last time you paid for a browser?

5) Why don't they just work on Vista and quit spending time on stuff like this? MS is still working on Vista, but only so many people can work on a project at a time. There are thousands of people doing thousands of projects at any big business. So this photo format team isn't going to be one assigned to Vista anyway. Though, it is possible that they were working on something for Vista and stumbled on this.

6) Gotta get the graphics geeks. Really? I would like to think that we're that important, but we're not. So, graphics people supposedly use only Macs (this is not true, but instituionally it is pretty close to everywhere.) Now if Macs make up 3-5% of the computer population, then the graphics gurus are only a small portion of the population. with the huge numbers of amateur photographers and designers out there, MS probably wouldn't care at all if no graphics/ pro-photogs used their format. As for Photoshop, they'll have to include support. PS already supports at least 18 formats, many of which I've never seen used. They would undoubtedly add any viable format that came into existence.

7)What is the negative reaction really about? It seems like there has been as much name calling and knee-jerk MS-sucks reaction in these posts as intelligent discourse. I think we should wait and hope for an improvement. Just because it ain't broke, doesn't mean it can't be better.

[pythonhacker]

Linux/Mac compatibility argument does not stand

I agree with most of the views of this comment. Linux/FLOSS guys have proved that they are very capable when it comes to wrapping around binary drivers/codecs written for Windows and making them work on Linux, without doing a lot of re-engineering. We have the examples of Mplayer which is very effective in reusing codecs written for Windows, ndiswrapper (reuses network drivers written for Windows) and of course Wine. So that argument is really not a valid one.

However, there is another point which I did not see in many replies - What if the high level of compression is directly related to some features in the kernel that is proprietary? MS is known to implement hooks and efficient backdoors in the Windows API which are not published as part of the documentation for 3rd party consumption. What if the 24:1 compression is due to such an hook in the Windows GDI part of the kernel ? Then of course, the format won't work as efficiently on other platforms as it will on Windows (Vista etc). It is very likely that MS will first push the format and even publish the spec allowing FLOSS guys to re-engineer/wrap around its codec, but the format might suffer performance-wise on non-Windows systems. Thus if the format gets widely adopted, it again will work to fuel MS monopoly (and perhaps another antitrust lawsuit :-)...

I for one, will be skeptical to adopt an MS standard, for they have more than once proved that they are very willing and capable to tie their applications (I.E) and formats (Windows Media) directly to the underlying pieces in their operating system to extract maximum mileage.

[pythonhacker]

Linux/Mac compatibility argument does not stand

I agree with most of the views of this comment. Linux/FLOSS guys have proved that they are very capable when it comes to wrapping around binary drivers/codecs written for Windows and making them work on Linux, without doing a lot of re-engineering. We have the examples of Mplayer which is very effective in reusing codecs written for Windows, ndiswrapper (reuses network drivers written for Windows) and of course Wine. So that argument is really not a valid one.

However, there is another point which I did not see in many replies - What if the high level of compression is directly related to some features in the kernel that is proprietary? MS is known to implement hooks and efficient backdoors in the Windows API which are not published as part of the documentation for 3rd party consumption. What if the 24:1 compression is due to such an hook in the Windows GDI part of the kernel ? Then of course, the format won't work as efficiently on other platforms as it will on Windows (Vista etc). It is very likely that MS will first push the format and even publish the spec allowing FLOSS guys to re-engineer/wrap around its codec, but the format might suffer performance-wise on non-Windows systems. Thus if the format gets widely adopted, it again will work to fuel MS monopoly (and perhaps another antitrust lawsuit :-)...

I for one, will be skeptical to adopt an MS standard, for they have more than once proved that they are very willing and capable to tie their applications (I.E) and formats (Windows Media) directly to the underlying pieces in their operating system to extract maximum mileage.

[aint_got_no_agenda: Go M$]

Forest through the trees...

Arrrgh. So many shot-from-the-hip kind of remarks are flying around here that I'm afraid of being hit. Frankly, I can't believe that so many of you are against this new (and improved) technology... and so many of you view it only from one aspect (ie photography).

Honestly, this format serves its best audience as a format mostly for the Internet, and your screen-based application environments (ie computer applications like word processors, games, etc. as well as things like cell-phones and PDAs to boot).

This new format is about alot of things that as a whole make it reign supreme... let me list them:

1. The format uses the same algorithm to make a picture be either lossy OR lossless... this is a great advantage for the web because you can have a lossless picture be stored on the web server (or home computer) and then (on-the-fly) use the exact same image to instantly re-render a (lossy) and of course smaller version to the browser... for example as a thumbnail, background image, etc. From a programmers perspective, it is extremely helpful that I can use the same application programming interface (API) to modify an image without too much effort... it allows for things to be done fairly easily like cropping an image, rotating it, adding filtering capabilities, adjusting contrast and hue, resizing, doing picture-in-picture, alpha channels (transparency), etc.... on the webserver itself then streamed instantly to the client browser... I could go on about such merits. Being able to do all sorts of flip-flop acrobatics with such a format will be a huge boon for the web and allow some really innovative interfaces to be created on web browsers.

2. Built in support for alpha channels (transparency)... JPG may be standard, but it doesn't do transparency. For that, the two current standards (on the web) are "gif" and "png"... albeit "jpg2000" has alpha channel support, but unfortunately the most common browsers today don't support that format as a standard (therefore killing it as a viable option as a mainstay format for use on the web). What the web needs at this point is precisely what Microsoft is introducing, a NEW standard format that does awesome yet truely flexible compression, alpha channels, built upon one standard API, has DRM??, and is being pushed by a body that really can make it a STANDARD (ie Microsoft)... the reason that jpeg2000 has gone nowhere is because there isn't any huge influential body pushing it into the mainstream. Microsoft is just the one to make it happen.

3. The compression is awesome... the Internet works only because of compression! Lets accept the fact that most images on the Internet are already lossy and introduce "artifacts" in an image... so what? That the nature of the beast when it comes to compression and quality of the images delivered on the web through web browsers. Microsoft's new format makes sending images with BETTER quality and SMALLER sizes possible... I'm tired of people saying that other formats do this equally well and easier (ie png, jpg2000, etc.)-- frankly that argument is untrue and unfounded. It's true that each of those formats of course have their own advantages, but individually not one has ALL these needed features neatly rolled up into one solution - like Microsoft is providing for us in this new format.

Lets be sober here in saying that anybody arguing that this isn't going to be a new standard, must be disillusioned. It WILL be a standard simply because Microsoft is going to have all its operating systems (XP and on) support it. Moreover and MORE IMPORTANTLY, Internet Explorer will support it (which is the undeniable king of the browsers when it comes to market penetration). Billions of browsers (ie Internet Explorer users) will be seeing this format in everyday use on the web. Web developers ARE going to embrace this format... there are too many advantages to it not to embrace it (of course they'll use jpg/png as "programatically controlled" backups if the browser doesn't support the new format. However, I'm not loosing sleep over wondering if Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, etc. will support the format... THEY WILL. Or risk being adversely ostricized by the developer community. All this of course depends on when Microsoft submits this new format to the W3C body for standards approval.

Lastly, the photography crowd will always want lossless when they can get it. Nobody is saying that photographers should use this format in lieu of RAW... RAW is perfect for keeping every bit of information available to be able to manipulate an image. This new Microsoft format will most likely serve as a complementary format to such photographers, allowing an easier (and more compact) way of showcasing their masterpieces... but all-in-all, this new format isn't meant to compete with RAW or TIFF.

The nay sayers should really start looking at the bigger picture and stop focusing in on nonsense argumentative junk such as the "evil" Microsoft monopolies, "open source is better" crap and lame positions that other alternatives exists so why bother (1. there aren't really any other comparitive alternatives that do ALL this 2. the new image format will run on Linux, Macs, and any other OS - Microsoft has made porting kits to do these things already).

Innovation is good... don't cloud the issues!

Now tell me I'm wrong.

[qwerty75]

Message has been deleted.

[ggupta7]

well said

I liked your reasoning. People are talking about professional photography, but what about the other 99% people who use point and shoot cameras which can save picture only as jpeg format. I once saw one which was TIFF capable but took half a minute to save the image on memory card. If this new format works out well, it could well replace jpeg in those lower end cameras.

Second, I saw a lot of people talking about bigger hard drives which obviates the need of compression. Maybe they should go back to BMP because they have "big hard drives". And what about internet! Flash files are so smaller as compared to similar animation in gif or an mpg video. That's why flash is so popular.

Plus, all those people who don't like proprietary formats will have to give up PDF and MS office documents, real, windows media, quicktime, DivX and so many more. Can't imagine a world without all these.

[hssdbf1]

how about FREE formats? I'll name a few..

1. How about Open Office--not anything propriatery from Microsoft or Apple;
2. How about OGG Vorbis instead of MP3/AU/WAV
3. How about just staying with JPEG
4. How about ending Microsoft's and Apple's tyranny?
-Signed below: A Non-Apple and Non-Microsoft and NON-PROPRIETARY computer user.

PS. Apple computer is not any better--their business practices enforece only 'their' standard too: quicktime, proprietary Operating System, propriatery hardware, and I can go for miles. Real alternatives are in Linux, and other free Operating Systems. Sad thing is that most of people see Apple as the alternative, when in fact it's the same mindset--only they're not as good in it as Microsoft is.

[hssdbf1]

how about FREE formats? I'll name a few..

1. How about Open Office--not anything propriatery from Microsoft or Apple;
2. How about OGG Vorbis instead of MP3/AU/WAV
3. How about just staying with JPEG
4. How about ending Microsoft's and Apple's tyranny?
-Signed below: A Non-Apple and Non-Microsoft and NON-PROPRIETARY computer user.

PS. Apple computer is not any better--their business practices enforece only 'their' standard too: quicktime, proprietary Operating System, propriatery hardware, and I can go for miles. Real alternatives are in Linux, and other free Operating Systems. Sad thing is that most of people see Apple as the alternative, when in fact it's the same mindset--only they're not as good in it as Microsoft is.

[richto]

Yes how about them

1. Open Office - Poor copy of Office 97. Might be bareable for those that only use the most basic functionality, but forget it in the enterprise. Just look at the Office 12 beta and drool...

2. How about WMA and WMA Pro? It outperforms Ogg for the same file sizes.

3. You can stay. The rest of the world will move on.

4. Apples tyranny? ahahahahahahaha That's funny. They mostly sell to schools and other low capability users. Something like 1% of global market share. insignificant.

As for Linux and 'free' operating systems - you get what you pay for...Sure they are alternatives - for the few geeks who can cope with recompiling a kernel everytime they change a driver, and the endless endless security updates required to keep Linux patched.

For home and enterprise users though - forget it. Its not happening.

[omellar]

Must be universal, standard and free for archiving

I run a business at oscans.com in Australia where we bulk scan
and digitise large collections of photographs.

The major reason is to create long term archives.

"Archive" does not mean anything if the files are in a proprietary
format

While TIFF is the best but voluminous, JPEG is smaller, but both
are universal and are accepted industry standards. No one will
trust Microsoft to supply an industry standard within to store
their priceless photographs. And I would never scan to such
standard for that reason.

The issue of storage for important images is of decreasing
importance, as storage cost plummet. A wedding shot on 30
rolls of 120 film converts to about 5-10GB as uncompressed
TIFF, which is now about the same cost of hard drive storage as
one roll of film.

[Urza9814]

SAVE battery life???

Wouldn't this HURT battery life? Because the more it's compressed, the more work it takes to uncompress it. It doesn't matter what the file size is...you can kill power to the memory and the picture will still be there. But wouldn't the extra CPU power needed to decode these things lower the battery life of devices?

[ianlee74]

Not necessarily

You're making an assumption that the MS compression technique requires more processing power to attain the lower levels of compression instead of attaining lower compression in the same or fewer CPU cycles. I don't think the facts of this have been posted yet. My guess is that they have figured out a smarter way to compress without too many more CPU cycles as opposed to just cranking down the compression wheel a few more turns...

[breakabout]

You've got to be kidding.

Seriously folks, a quote from a "part-time professional photographer"? You couldn't pick up a phone book and call a few pros? (BTW, one of the definition of professional is earning more than 2/3 of your income from the work.)

MAny, many pros use jpeg. I prefer RAW myself, but that's because of the extra range it gives me, not because jpeg "artifacts make it almost unusable for professional photographers." The debate over RAW vs. JPEG vs. TIFF is ongoing among pros, and shows no sign of stopping.

MS's new format also is not the "first viable compression format." TIFF is lossless compression, and JPEG works fine, as long as you don't try to compress too far, and then print from it.

I'm sure there will be a format to replace JPEG someday, but if it is too gain acceptance, it will have to be open source, and not tied too closely to any company.

Oh, and BTW, I'm a photojournalist with about 20 years in the field. Full-time.

Cheers

[jdscardino]

More compression?

I thought the whole idea behind coming up with larger capacity hard disks and flash drives with faster, more powerful processors was to get rid of compression.

HD anyone? People want lossless audio files now - they want raw photos - they want high definition video. Is another form of compression really what we need?

[aint_got_no_agenda: Go M$]

Yes, absolutely!

More compression = more speed (in transfering/moving data & in saving data). The additional compression/decompression (codec) processing times are negligible in comparison.

Faster is better I believe... so I'm an avid supporter.

[ITsover]

I wonder if...

Could it be that MS is trying to "reinvent" the photo file format exclusively to add some sort of DRM and making it sound like a tech advance to sugarcoat it?

[JohnUSA]

Only on the following conditions

The only way I will approve on Microsoft's Windows Media Photo to replace JPEG are on these conditions:
1) It must be proven without any doubt that is as good or superior to JPEG.
2) It MUST completely be FREE, FOREVER.
3) Be without any strings or conditions or any **** that Microsoft may throw at its users.
Simply put, I never, never trust Microsoft.
They are the biggest and meanest bully in the software world.

[chuck_whealton]

Licensing should not be a restriction?

Yea, I'll believe that when I see it... Sheesh... We really needed another format...

Charles Whealton

Chuck Whealton @ pleasedon'tspam.com

[mstrclark]

Make it Free

If it doesn't cost anything to license, I think that most of the industry would support it. A replacement for the old school JPEG file format is long overdue.

[URTido]

Misuse of photo formats

For professional and "pro-sumer" individuals, it is counter
productive to use a compressed image format except for e-
mailing or publishing on the web. In order for a format to
replace something like RAW or TIFF (both loss-less formats used
by professionals) they need to create a format that is
indistinguishable from the loss-less formats before they will be
used by professionals. Saying that a compressed image format is
better for printing because of speed is a bunch of BS; prints are
permanent so you want the best quality.

As for JPEG, any new format must overcome the hurdle of being
supported by the number of applications and OSes (Windows,
Mac, Linux, etc). Also, most people don't know that anything
else exists besides JPEG, and therefore they try to use JPEG for
everything. JPEG, and all of the other compressed formats, are
designed for uploading and downloading to the web. Which
makes sense since you have limited bandwidth to the internet,
so make you files small enough to communicate what you want
to share.

Compressed formats are not designed for high-quality printing.