Digital Home Thoughts: Microsoft's HD Photo Proposed for JPEG XR

"Back in March of this year, Microsoft unveiled HD Photo, a new high-end image format which promised higher image quality and better compression than current image standards, while adding features explicitly designed to support future digital cameras and image editing programs. Today, Microsoft announced that it has formally offered HD Photo for consideration as an international standard by JPEG, the Joint Photographic Experts Group. If adopted as part of a larger effort called JPEG Systems, HD Photo would be known as "JPEG XR." The idea behind standardizing on the format is to give makers of digital cameras, printers, and displays—as well as software developers—both a single, consistent format to support, but also to ensure interoperability between products which support JPEG XR. And most importantly, if HD Photo is approved as a standard, Microsoft will offer royalty-free access to its patents which are required to implement HD Photo."



Finally. Frankly, JPEG is getting a little long in the tooth. If you've bought a high-megapixel camera in the last year (7MP or more), you've come to hate compression artifacts. Most of the cameras on the market today save to JPEG by default, and few even give you any other option. Hopefully JPEG XR will still keep the file sizes down while preserving more detail than JPEG does today. The proof is in the pudding however. I'd like to see a side by side comparison.