Lately, Microsoft has been a continuous source of news, the Redmond company announcing today at WinHEC a new format for digital photos.


And when we say a new format, we don't mean a new extension, but a whole new structure, which offers a clearly superior quality when compared to one of the most popular standards today, the well-known JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group).

According to Microsoft, Windows Media Photo employs a new, state-of-the-art compression algorithm optimized for the digital photography market, capable of offering image quality comparable to JPEG-2000 with computational and memory performance more closely comparable to JPEG.

Windows Media Photo delivers a lossy compressed image of better perceptive quality than JPEG at less than half the file size. The same compression algorithm can also deliver mathematically lossless compressed images that are typically 2.5 times smaller than the original uncompressed data.

"One of the biggest reasons people upgrade their PCs is digital photos," News.com quoted Bill Crow, program manager for Windows Media Photo, as saying. He also mentioned that Microsoft has been in contact with printer makers, digital camera companies and other unnamed industry partners while working on Windows Media Photo.

The only problem the giant software is likely to face with Windows Media Photo is getting the format adopted by the whole photographic industry.