Microsoft is planning to take on JPEG with Windows Media Photo, a new format the compnay claims offers a higher-quality alternative to the aging JPEG standard, Microsoft Watch reported from Seattle. In half the size, a WMP file would produce higher quality images when printed and even when sent through e-mail, the company said in a Wednesday session at the WinHEC conference in Seattle. As a result, images saved in the format would require significantly less space to store.
According to Microsoft, Windows Media Photo supports a wide range of features including:
Multiple color formats for display or print
Fixed or floating point high dynamic range image encoding
Lossless or high quality lossy compression
Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions
Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode
Windows Media Photo delivers a lightweight, high performance algorithm with a small memory footprint that enables practical, in-device encoding and decoding, said a company spokesperson.
This version of the specification is based on the implementation of the Windows Media Photo codec that is currently shipping with Windows Vista Beta 2 and the WinFX Runtime Components Beta 2.
