By delivering RAW support in Windows Vista, Microsoft has attempted to provide an extensible platform for proprietary formats. This initiative aims to bridge together disparate RAW file formats that are anything but universally supported. But the fact of the matter is that RAW images preserve extra information compared to TIFF and JPG, and it is the format of choice for professional photographers.

"In the past, RAW shooters had to either rely on RAW conversion software provided by their camera manufacturer, or put their fate in the hands of the myriad of software makers who have attempted to reverse-engineer these formats for support in their software applications. This led to a number of problems: compatibility issues, varying quality or inconsistent results from one application to another, and holes in the user workflow where RAW support is lacking," revealed a member of the Microsoft PIX team.

In this context, Microsoft is working with major camera manufacturers in order to make available codecs for the RAW formats. Nikon, Sony and Olympus are among the manufacturers that have made RAW codecs available for Windows Vista. The Windows Photo Gallery plays a central role in acquiring codecs via the check for updates feature.

Vista users will be able not only to view supported proprietary image formats across the operating system, but also to edit them via the Windows Photo Gallery. "They perform on their JPG files in the Photo Gallery - their RAW files can be viewed, tagged, rated, printed, etc. Because photographers shoot RAW for advanced editing of their photos, we did not enable the light touch-up functionality in the Photo Gallery for RAW files. Windows Vista also exposes a set of APIs, so that other applications can also provide this same level of functionality by using the same RAW codec," added the PIX team member.