Underexposed

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot lets photographers create gear lists for appointments.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has released a free Outlook plug-in to help photographers remember which equipment to bring to photo shoots they've scheduled with the calendar and contacts software.

The free plug-in, called Pro Photo Shoot, lets photographers create a list of their photographic equipment and then use a check-box list to pick what's needed for a particular appointment. Outlook produces a sorted list.

The software can be downloaded for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.

The software is part of Microsoft's gradual effort to appeal more to photography enthusiasts, an audience that historically has been one of Apple's most loyal and lucrative. Another part of that effort is Microsoft's work to standardize HD Photo as JPEG XR, an alternative to conventional JPEG that can store higher-fidelity images.

And another part is support in Windows Vista for viewing, tagging, printing, and otherwise handling "raw" photos, the unprocessed sensor data from higher-end cameras that can yield higher-quality photos than ordinary JPEG. Where Apple creates its own raw image codecs--software for encoding and decoding digital files--Microsoft relies on camera manufacturers to supply them. (The codecs also work with Windows Live Photo Gallery installed on Windows XP.)

I've found it difficult to locate the codecs in the past, since it often requires navigating various camera makers' support site, but Microsoft has just set up a new site with links to download the Vista raw image codecs. So far, support is included for the main digital SLR manufacturers: Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, and Olympus. In addition, Ardfry Imaging offers a codec for $30, or a free trial version, to handle raw images encoded with Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format.

Update: I clarified the caption of the illustration to better indicate what editing had gone on to produce the side-by-side images.

Microsoft has taken the beta tag off a plug-in to let Photoshop read and write files in the HD Photo format, which Microsoft is standardizing as JPEG XR.

The free plug-in is available for download for Windows and Mac OS X systems. The plug-ins work on Windows XP and Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and Photoshop CS2 or CS3, Bill Crow, who's overseen the HD Photo and JPEG XR effort, wrote on his blog Thursday.

These two images both are edited versions of overexposed originals. After editing, the overexposed JPEG version on the left looks murky. The right picture, originally encoded and then edited as an HD Photo, has more dynamic range, so detail in the highlights can be recovered better. It's shown here converted back into regular JPEG after the editing process.

(Credit: Microsoft/Bill Crow)

Microsoft hopes HD Photo eventually will replace the ubiquitous JPEG standard overseen by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Among the HD Photo advantages that Microsoft touts: it offers more efficient compression, richer color and a much wider dynamic range; it can optionally store images without data loss from compression; it's free of royalty and licensing constraints; and it can run in camera hardware. Support for the file format, initially called Windows Media Photo, is built into Windows Vista.

HD Photo also can be used to show images online at different resolutions, transmitting only the portion of the image that's shown on the screen. That's useful for zooming in to a high-resolution photo without having to download a vast image, a technology Microsoft uses in its HD View software for viewing detailed images online. One organization using HD View is Xrez.

However, Microsoft faces significant challenges in encouraging adoption of the technology. Building it into Vista is a big step, and an endorsement from Photoshop publisher Adobe Systems helps, but JPEG is deeply entrenched. Standardization through JPEG could encourage industry players to adopt the standard--in particular those who are leery of Microsoft's power.

But there are plenty of standards that never catch on. What could really tip the balance in favor of HD Photo/JPEG XR is if it gets built into cameras directly so photographers can start using it from the outset.

The final version of the plug-in, developed in part by Pegasus Imaging Systems, looks mostly like recent betas, Crow said.

"All the changes we've made since the last beta are under the covers, fixing a couple minor bugs, addressing several theoretical security vulnerabilities and generally bringing the code up to current Microsoft standards for released software," he said. "Don't forget that the beta versions will expire on December 31st, so you should definitely download and install these new released versions."

Nikon's D300 just started shipping, and a software update means Windows Vista can handle its raw images.

(Credit: Nikon)

Software updates from Nikon and Canon this month bring Windows Vista support for "raw" images taken with the companies' newest SLRs--and in Canon's case, a number of older cameras as well.

Raw images contain more data than JPEG and give photographers more control over processing, but different cameras and manufacturers use different proprietary formats, making support a challenge. Microsoft relies on camera makers to supply customers with "codec" software that lets Windows Vista--and any programs that use its image-handling abilities--read the proprietary raw image formats. In contrast, Apple writes its own codecs, and Windows XP doesn't have any built-in support for viewing raw images.

Version 1.1 of Nikon's codec adds support for the new $5,000 top-end D3, due to ship imminently, and the $1,800 D300, which just began shipping.

The new version 1.2 of Canon's codec supports its new $8,000 top-end EOS-1Ds Mark III, also imminent, and the $1,300 EOS 40D that's been on the market for a few weeks.

The software also supports a number of older compact and SLR cameras from years past that supported raw files, said Chuck Westfall, a Canon spokesman and tech guru, and works with the Windows Live Photo Gallery software on Windows XP.

In addition, Canon upgraded a swath of other software, including its ZoomBrowser EX and ImageBrowser photo-browsing utilities, its Digital Photo Professional tool for editing raw images, its PhotoStitch software for joining photos into a panorama, its Picture Style Editor for adjusting photo color, and its EOS Utility for controlling cameras with a computer.

The new versions of these products bring support for the new cameras, and in the case of Digital Photo Professional, adds the ability to correct some lens aberrations, Westfall said. The other packages can be downloaded from camera model Web pages.

(Via Rob Galbraith.)

Updated: Microsoft now says image uploads to non-Microsoft photo sites will be possible.

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Microsoft developed Windows Vista in part to make it easier for people to manage their digital photos. Now it has released beta software that's trying to refine that experience further.

Windows XP leaves much to be desired with photo management, Mike Nash, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Product Management, said Wednesday in a talk here at the InfoTrends Digital Imaging conference. On the list of gripes: XP lacks abilities to edit, archive, search, tag and edit images; it can't support the higher-end but unprocessed "raw" photos; transferring images to PCs is "slow and cumbersome"; and "color management was sketchy at best."

Windows Vista is designed to fix these shortcomings, Nash said. But newer software called Windows Live, in public beta testing since earlier this month, is geared to expand photo abilities even more--in part through improving what the PC can do on its own and in part what it can do with the Internet.

"The notion of live services is a critical part of Microsoft's strategy," Nash said. "Our mindset is that the value proposition of Windows Vista is a combination of the core operating system and those online services."

Of course, XP isn't the only comparison to Vista that can be made. Apple's Mac OS X includes many photo-friendly features already.

Dave Block, Windows senior product manager, demonstrated the photo-related components of the Windows Live software. Windows Live Photo Gallery augments Windows Vista Photo Gallery with the ability to sharpen images and to view a histogram that shows an image's distribution of light and dark tones.

The software also adds the ability to upload photos with two mouse clicks to Windows Live Spaces, an online site for blogging and sharing photos. Eventually, Microsoft plans to "expand publishing options for Windows Live Photo Gallery to other sites in the future," so those who use services such as Flickr or Shutterfly need not despair.

Windows Live Gallery, part of a suite that includes other components for blogging, mail and other tasks, takes over from the Vista Photo Gallery when installed, Block said in an interview.

Microsoft may not think as much about photo handling with Windows XP, but there's one feature from the earlier operating system that Microsoft is adding back into Vista as a result of customer feedback. In XP, the photo-import process let people select which photos they wanted to transfer to the PC and which photos they wanted to delete or leave on a camera. With Vista, it's an all-or-nothing affair.

"A goal with Vista was to make photo import really simple. But we got feedback that people wanted it to be more highly functional," Block said.

Windows Live Photo Gallery shouldn't be thought of as what Vista's photo management ought to have been, Block argued. "It's adding new features. Don't think of it as a patch," he said.

During the photo import process, on either the standard and augmented Vista, people can tag their images with labels such as photo locations and subject names. Adding such "metadata" is a crucial part to enabling software and therefore computer users to search for particular photos.

Vista simplifies some of the divergent standards for photo metadata, said InfoTrends analyst Ed Lee. There are still problems, however.

For example, image-editing powerhouse Adobe Systems also offers software that lets people tag photos and rate them on a scale of one to five stars. Adobe and Microsoft software can read the primary photo tags the other company's software has written. But the companies take an incompatible approach for subtags that provide more elaborate detail. A "flower" primary tag could be expanded by adding a "rose" subtag, for example.

"There's no agreed upon industry standard," Block said. "Both implementations are good; they're just not compatible."

He didn't have a projection for when the companies might work out their subtagging differences.

The Windows Live beta software can be downloaded from Microsoft. It's available for Windows XP and Vista, but it requires the installation of other components for search and color management for XP, and of SQL 2005 Compact Edition for both operating systems.

ACD Systems has released version 2.0 of its ACDSee Pro software, bringing support for Windows Vista and Adobe's Digital Negative (DNG) software to the software for importing, naming, viewing, editing, labeling, displaying and archiving image files.

The company released ACDSee Pro 2.0 Tuesday at a price of $130. The software runs only on Windows.

ACDSee Pro is geared for quick review and "development" of raw files, the higher-quality images taken directly from camera image sensors without in-camera processing. Raw processing features include recovery of details lost in underexposed or overexposed areas, conversion to black and white, and batch editing. After photographers have labeled images with metadata such as keywords and titles, that metadata can be saved either to XMP Sidecar files or embedded in DNG files.

The software supports a wide variety of raw formats from major camera makers.