Digital Home Thoughts: Microsoft Announces HD Photo

"HD Photo offers compression with up to twice the efficiency of JPEG, with fewer damaging artifacts, resulting in higher-quality images that are one-half the file size. In addition, HD Photo offers increased image fidelity, preserving the entire original image content and enabling higher-quality exposure and color adjustments in the image. This new format offers the ability to decode only the information needed for any resolution or region, or the option to manipulate the image as compressed data... In addition, HD Photo offers both lossless and lossy image compression, and can retain the full dynamic range and color gamut data from a camera’s sensor. Also, because making adjustments to common color balance and exposure settings won’t discard or truncate data as other common bitmap formats typically do, it’s easier to “undo” those changes at a later time. As a result, significantly smaller files can be created while still retaining optimum picture quality."



Microsoft's new HD Photo format sounds very nice, something photographers have needed for some time. I imagine though that in order to fully take advantage of it you'd have to shoot in RAW, and most people don't. As long as you keep taking pictures in JPEG format, you've already lost any advantage using HD Photo would give. It is, however, a significant step in the right direction. With any luck we'll start seeing cameras that natively support MS's new format around next year. A beta of the Vista plugin is available now, and plugins for Photoshop will be available soon. Microsoft expects to officially unveil HD Photo within 60 days.