Get Inside Microsoft's New Photo Format

HD Photo format is not an example of novelty for Microsoft, as there has been talk about the Redmond Company's JPEG killer since 2006, only that back then it was referred to as Windows Media Photo. At the beginning of this month, Microsoft has taken action in order to make HD Photo as ubiquitous as JPEG is today. At the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) 07 International Convention and Trade Show in Las Vegas, on March 8, Microsoft only officially introduced the digital image format, and announced that HD Photo will be submitted to a standards organization soon.

Additionally, in order to speed up adoption, Microsoft has made available for download a free set of HD Photo plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop and the HD Photo Device Porting Kit 1.0, tools designed to enable the implementation of HD Photo still image codec on non-Windows platforms and devices.

The Microsoft PIX Team compiled a list with the Microsoft products that support HD Photo. Users can handle HD Photo via Windows Imaging Component (WIC) in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Also HD Photo Device Porting Kit, NET Framework 3.0, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Photo Info Power Toy, Microsoft Expression Family and the HD Photo plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop all support the new digital image format from Microsoft.

But the most important of them all is Windows Vista. HD Photo is supported by default in Vista, and it will grow in popularity with the adoption of the OS. HG Photo will also deliver support for the Widest Range of Pixel Formats, with a low footprint algorithm, superior image quality lossless and lossy compression through the same algorithm and the preservation of the entire dynamic range.