May 31, 2006 3:19 PM PDT
Readers zoom in on Microsoft's JPEG rival
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But they're not so sure it should be a Microsoft product such as the new Windows Media Photo format, which promises better quality images at half the size as JPEG files.
In an unscientific poll asking whether a JPEG competitor is needed, almost half of the 5,621 voters said maybe, "but I'm concerned about it being a Microsoft product."
About 20 percent said, yes, "e-mail and Web pages need smaller files," and about 30 percent voted, no, "JPEG works just fine."
Microsoft shows off JPEG rival
at half the size of JPEG files.
The poll was in response to a story on the demonstration of Windows Media Photo last week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. The compression technology will be supported in Windows Vista and made available for Windows XP.
The 135 reader comments on the story seemed to mirror poll results. Many agreed that new technology is a good thing, but can't get beyond its maker.
News.com Poll
"In the case of Microsoft, the concern must be, given Microsoft's abusive track record, pre-eminently the 'who,' and not the how or what of a proposed technology," one reader wrote. "Anyone who understands the usefulness of innovations such as the Web and the Internet must be wary of any proposed Microsoft 'standard.'"
Reader Peter Simpson added that no matter what the benefits are of Windows Media Photo, he's concerned about Redmond's "strong affinity for proprietary formats encumbered by Digital Restrictions Management."
"I'm concerned that, sometime in the future, Microsoft may hold my photos for ransom, requiring that I purchase an upgrade to view them," he wrote. "Or, even worse, that Microsoft may drop support for the format; and since it's proprietary, there wouldn't be any other viewers available."
A reader who went by the name "JohnUSA," said he'll only use the new format if it's proven without any doubt to be superior to JPEG, if it's completely free, forever, and if it's "without any strings or conditions or any **** that Microsoft may throw at its users...Simply put, I never, never trust Microsoft."
But another reader said it's time naysayers stop focusing 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."
"Let's 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," the reader wrote. "Moreover and more importantly, Internet Explorer will support it (which is the undeniable king of the browsers when it comes to market penetration)."
"Shao," is also impressed with Windows Media Photo, and just hopes it won't be held up by licensing issues.
"I, as an advanced amateur photographer with over 25 years with SLR cameras and a lot of past darkroom experience, am very impressed with the first information received here. No (loss) rotation, faster dSLR picture taking with this format, better compression with less quality loss," Shao wrote. "Definitely filling the gap between JPEG and RAW format. Seems too good to be true."
And others questioned why fix JPEG, if it ain't broke? "No need for another standard. JPEG is just fine for amateur photography," one reader wrote.
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Color Space. Finally someone is making life easier. Graphic artist, photographers, print techs and alike are constantly trying to get the colors right and jpg doesn't make it easy. You can't define a color space so you never know if the image was encoded with Adobe RGB or sRGB. MS new format allows the color space to be defined. And not just certain color space, any color space you can come up with along with a gamut cruve. This is a huge step in the right direction.
Also associated with the color space is embedding ICC profiles. Another big plus that will help with getting the colors right.
Color bit depth. jpg will only work with 8 bits, no more no less. The new format offers a plethora of options, 5,8,16,32 bit depths. This is important when you are shooting with a DSLR and it has 12 bits. As soon as you encode it to jpg you loose a ton of dynamic range and information. This forces you to shoot in the camera's proprietary RAW format. This allows the user to adjust the depth as needed. Many internet images will only need 5 bits and the file size will decrease significantly. On the other hand their is no lossy 16 or 32 compression formats. You have to go to PSD or TIFF which are lossless and bulky. Its about time a 16 bit lossy file format is offered.
Lossless vs lossy compression. To get a lossless compression you have to go to TIF. JPG doesn't offer a lossless compression. It will be nice to have a single format that offers both depending upon the users needs.
A minor plus but the new format will allow multiple images within the same image. You could set up a slide slow presentation that everyone could read. There are numerous applications with this, use your imagination.
I'm not worried about Microsoft putting restrictions on consumer usage or requiring users to pay to see their own images. What I am worried about is after it becomes the defacto standard MS will start charging royalties to manufacturers. Every device and software that uses the format might one day have to pay royalties. This fear will keep many manufacturers wary of adopting the new standard. It doesn't translate much of an increase to the consumer but it can mean millions for manufacturers who now have to pay a $1 royalty on every camera they make. I wish the jpg format would have evolved to address the issues MS did, but they haven't and they have had plenty of time to do it. So MS stepped in and took advantage of it. Hopefully everyone's mistrust of MS won't keep people from using it and hopefully MS won't take advantage of people's trust in the future.
Mark
licensing baggage that comes with everything from Microsoft.
Now that the Forgent copyright claim on the jpeg format has
been declared invalid, jpeg is an even better choice than it was
last month. Any new format has to be free.
Any new format has to be cross platform. What commercial
website would use images that couldn't be seen by 15% - 20% of
their potential customers? What company wants to make
professional cameras that won't be purchased by a large portion
of professional photographers because it won't work with their
favorite computer. Any new format has to be usable on Macs
and Linux.
And, you have to admit a lot of people believe that some truths
are universal: Water is wet, the sky is blue, and it's best if you
don't trust Microsoft. So anything they develope will start with
one strike against it.
My prediction is their new format may be incorporated into a
component of Windows and/or Office but will never become
something used by others to any great extent.
That is IF it ever materializes at all. Didn't MS announce a PDF
killer a while back. Did that vapor ever condense into a real
product?
in as you become comfortable with their file formats and have all
your documents in that format. Then they have you in too deep to
change.
Just to add a few more comments... I am not a Microsoft hater nor a Microsoft lover. I am somewhere in between. But I gotta tell you, Microsoft needs to stop trying to "improve" things that either someone already does really well (iPod/iTunes) or something that doesn't need any improvements, just to try to "call it their own".
Hey Microsoft why don't you suprise us and come up with something truly revolutionary for a change?
If the bastards are still stuck with crappy JPEG (slightly defeating the purpose of me buying a higher MP/quality camera) then I will simply take images in RAW mode.
I will NOT lose precious data with JPEG once a superb alternative is supported in Vista, XP, IE7, and Photoshop. I will simply batch convert the images to that format (in two or three sizes) and delete the RAWs. After all, I'm not a pro photographer.
Will this keep me in MS-land forever? Nah... I'll still in the future be able to convert back to the lossless leader of that day, in case I get sick of MS's prices. My then-500 Terabyte harddrive ("DVD"?) will take those measly 20,000 home-made images and leave space for a few millions more... I probably won't be able to recompress them decently - but I don't think I'll care much (CPU/storage/bandwidth-wise)...
Right now there's a company preparing to sue everyone out there who's using jpeg--a company which claims to have had the majority of its jpeg patents upheld recently by a US Patents Office review. Microsoft is trying to get around these patents with its newer compression formats, formats which not coincidentally compress better but display as well as jpeg.
As long as sites like CNet are themselves ignorant as to how much commercial money goes into "open source" of all kinds, and how "open source" software has to pay the same licensing fees for patented software as the makers of commercial software have to pay, and how the creators of "open source" often make lots of money themselves--well, CNet readers for the most part will remain ignorant themselves.
The remedy for that is to read widely outside of CNet...;) It's difficult to understand how CNet could have missed the root of the jpeg story. I'd say that when it comes to Microsoft you guys have a prejudicial blind spot as wide as the Atlantic ocean.
That said a new format is needed, while there are a lot of current formats (jpeg, tiff, gif, png...) none of those formats has a superset of the features included in the other formats.
PNG is probably the best all around current format but it lacks the "multiple images" in one file capability which TIFF provides. TIFF is a fairly good format but doesn't offer compression. GIF is obsolete mainly due to a now expired patent and the demands made for royalties by the Unisys corporation. JPEG is the workhorse format for images currently but it's shortcomings are also well known and of course there's another pack of greedy fools extorting money from people because they think they've got a patent on some of the technology used in those images.
It looks like MS has covered the bases on what's technically needed for a new image format, the question is whether they'll leave it free enough that it can be adopted as a standard even by MS's competitors.
Talk about a lousy selection of answer options!
Microsoft needs to learn that their way of doing business has created major trust issues. As in most people don't trust them.
Robert
But, since this is a media format rather than an application developed to manipulate it, it should be released as an open standard. They can take credit for the creation but keeping it propriatery us just wrong.
There also aren't a lot of tools that support OpenDocument for the same reason - it's a new format.
It's been said before and it will be said again, nobody can trust Microsoft. They aren't in business for the good of any customer only the bottom line. The more the consumer gives into that the more power they have over how you choose to use your computer. I'm being blunt here, but I think that anybody who can't see or understand that is just fooling themselves.
Mirosoft is one of the most competitive and agressive companies in any market. Bill is out to win be damned sportsmanship or fairness. It's not apart of his agenda.
It's not about open source or Linux, it's about the right to choose how you use your technology. What good is it to have an image format that you are restricted on it's uses or platforms it can be used on. I'm not opposed to a new format to rival JPEG and I'm not opposed to it being developed by Microsoft. I am opposed to it being controlled or owned by Microsoft. If Microsoft would like my support they need to give it up to a standards body and make it completly unincumbered by any patents or copyrights. Otherwise it's just another Microsoft proprietary piece of software that, better or worse, locks you into doing what Microsoft want's you to do.
- This just wont work
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by joevallely
June 2, 2006 4:28 PM PDT
- JPEG works fine for amateur photography - this format is target at the professionals who deal with increably large and detailed files. The trouble is that the vast majority of such professionals make extencive use of Mac's, and I really can't see Windows Media Photo featuring in Mac OSX.
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