Microsoft's HD Photo to Become JPEG Standard? 369
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?"
can this be the only solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:As long as anyone can implement it ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not seeing how they would cleanly construct such an attack. The patent license restrictions in GPLv3 are very specific - I don't think that Microsoft can come up with a licensing setup that would run into trouble with the GPL and still be considered distributable by "Open Source" type vendors.
Even if they did come up with such a patent license, the vendors can simply ship libjpegxr as a platform library and still not have any trouble with the GPLv3.
Re:As long as anyone can implement it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Begun the license wars have.
Re:Deja GIF. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:can this be the only solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
The current licence is *much* more liberal, and I think Microsoft deserve credit for the move. I still don't trust them, but they did make a move in the right direction in this case.
Re:It's A Trap. EULA to view the specs (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Not really suitable for raw camera images (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [openraw.org].
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
Re:Deja GIF. (Score:3, Interesting)
Where does PNG fit into the paraidgm? I mean, I know it's got more advanced alpha transparency than gif, and I think that it's based on plain ol' bitmaps as opposed to compression, so it seems like a strict successor to GIF...
However, gif still has some legs up on it, namely ubiquity and the fact that animated PNGs support doesn't seem to be remotely common.
So is this basically correct? Anything I'm missing?
Re:Deja GIF. (Score:3, Interesting)
Although PNG has good compression over something like TIFF or BMP for full-color images, it's still a poor choice for posting large photos to the Web, as its lossless compression results in unwieldly file sizes while maximum (and adequate) quality JPEGs do much better.
Re:It's a 'standard', right? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Deja GIF. (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Can't make "Public Domain" (Score:3, Interesting)
It's really that easy.
Re:Deja GIF. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I don't understand why microsoft supports mac os at all... They've not supported linux.
If MS coded IE/Windows like they did as IE/Mac, sitting in its own directory, not messing system and tries to comform current standards as much as possible, Mozilla wouldn't exist now.
IE for Mac has nothing to do with Windows version except name and couple of text encoding (win-1252) evil MS tricks. To explain you better, it came with a full feature download manager, colorsync support and even ebay etc. bidding watch.
Of course it is not maintained anymore and a complete security/stability risk now. I am just trying to explain why you still see Mac users referencing it. Using Mac doesn't mean hating everything MS produces. In fact, their Office is one of the very good apps they produced. I really don't care about loud mouth fanatics so I basically reference "versiontracker" top downloads and Amazon.com top selling Mac software. That is the reality, real World.
The Mac scene is different. Real Player gets good reviews, MSN Messenger is one of the top downloaded apps, people still download/use Netscape because they have nothing to do with Windows versions. They never did.
Good for microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:"Nothing for you to see here; please move along (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm saying it's highly unlikely Microsoft is doing this out of the good of their heart.
Maybe you're anti-capitalist because you don't understand how capitalism works. Of course they aren't doing out of the kindness of their heart. The point of capitalism is that the self-interest of each party works to the eventual benefit of the other, because they each have something the other wants. In this case, Microsoft has a potentially useful file format. Consumers have money. Microsoft wants money. Whether consumers want this new file format enough to make the trade is the rub.