HD Photo and JPEG XR

Sebzy

HD Photo Plug-ins for Photoshop
http://www.dcviews.com/press/Microsoft-HD-Photo-2.htm

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Press thing

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http://www.dcviews.com/press/Microsoft-HD-Photo.htm

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key point of it all

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If approved, Microsoft will offer a royalty-free grant for its patents that are required to implement the standard

PaulieC

ooh, can't wait to see the outpouring of derision for Microsoft on this one.

"but they're a monopoly...'
"it should be open source'

yadda yadda yadda

Fenster

Don't get me started on proprietary versus open standards as I'm currently writing a short essay on them.

That said, what interests me is their claim of increasing dynamic range. Short of very heavy processing I'm of the understanding that dynamic range is more or less determined by the sensor. How can they pull extra stops simply from a file format?

5uspect

I guess they mean that their file type doesn't clip DR in the RAW conversion as much as JPEG?

PaulieC

Fenster wrote: »

Don't get me started on proprietary versus open standards as I'm currently writing a short essay on them.

I would assume you are pro open standards then? yet you happily use an apple mac and a canon camera, flash and lenses?

PopeBuckfastXVI

You tell 'em Cambo!

"If approved, Microsoft will offer a royalty-free grant for its patents that are required to implement the standard."

As opposed to charging for people to implement it, or indeed allowing anyone else to patent and charge for it.... the monsters!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Will it mean that current RAW is obsolete... or will it just mean we will be converting our proprietary RAW's to this new format?

PaulieC

PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »

You tell 'em Cambo!

ah crap! my devil's advocate cover is blown!

Fenster

cambo_gueno wrote: »

I would assume you are pro open standards then? yet you happily use an apple mac and a canon camera, flash and lenses?

I favour open standards when and where possible, but I only thing they are essential in certain critical areas. And camera mounts aren't critical areas.

oshead

I read something about this a while back. From what I remember, it is a joint initative from M$ and Adobe.

I'm all in favour of anything that standardizes image format for the years ahead. Who is to say that the digital archive format I'm using at the moment dosn't become obsolete. For any reason... the company who owns it could go out of business of just decide not to support it anymore.

JMcL

In terms of quality versus compression, it would appear to be an interesting format. Standard JPEG is showing its age, and is by no means the ideal format. The problem is that it's a very widely adopted format, and as such is probably going to be dominant for a while yet - JPEG 2000 didn't exactly set the world on fire. Similarly, Ogg Vorbis, despite being a superior codec to MP3 for a given bitrate, is as rare as hens teeth in media players.

Still it's good to see the Beast at least making moves towards openness, even if the devil may be in the detail

andy1249

My whole problem with this wouldnt be so much open vs proprietary , more the fact that its Microsoft , a company that has no morals whatsoever and couldnt care less who knows it.

Trusting any standard to the likes of Microsoft is never going to turn out well. They will screw you for it at some stage.

PaulieC

andy1249 wrote: »

My whole problem with this wouldnt be so much open vs proprietary , more the fact that its Microsoft , a company that has no morals whatsoever and couldnt care less who knows it.

Trusting any standard to the likes of Microsoft is never going to turn out well. They will screw you for it at some stage.

oh please, let's not be drama queens or anything.

I assume you feel hard done by Microsoft as they have 'screwed' you in the past somehow?

And in any case, if you had read the articles linked, you would see that no one is trusting any standards to Microsoft, Microsoft is submitting their format to the JPEG people to be adopted as a new open standard.

magicbastarder

from my (obviously low level) dealings with MS, they're quite simply the most ruthless company i've had dealings with.
they still don't beat IBM for believing their own hype, though.

andy1249

And in any case, if you had read the articles linked, you would see that no one is trusting any standards to Microsoft, Microsoft is submitting their format to the JPEG people to be adopted as a new open standard.

Plenty read up on the subject thank you very much ,

And "submitting" a standard here would be the same as them " submitting " the so called open office standard that they have , which is of course nothing of the sort ,
If anyone wants to read up on the low scumbag like tricks microsoft will gladly stoop to to get its way then theres plenty of information here ,

www.groklaw.net

You either condone such behaviour or you dont , in the end we all get what we deserve.

PaulieC

again: Oh Please!

MS didn't do anything with the Open Document format, they just submitted their own.

And I asked you before, did they screw you over in any way to make you feel this way? Or are you just another Ms hater, blindly following along?

Do you feel the same towards Apple? Canon? If not, why not?

PopeBuckfastXVI

But Cambo,

You're missing the important point when it comes to this complex debate about the good and ills of multinational corporations, and the subtle differences between what makes one corporation good, and one not so good.

Hmm I'll try to distill it into it's most pure form, an easily digestible bitesize chunk, if you will:

zOMG!!11 micro$oft is teh evil LOLZ... apple rulez coz tehy r teh l33t n PCs r lamerz!1111!! int u seen teh apples v pc ads d00d!!!?1/!?!?!?? appels r teh r0x0rz!!! it sez so on teh ad innit????!?!?!11

Fenster

I also forgot to say that Microsoft might have the best intentions in the world in regards to the proposed standard, and in turn make it completely open, but it's all for nothing if Canon, Nikon and other camera manufacturers decide not to support it in favour of the current "standard" combination of proprietary raw and jpeg.

I think that for the most part it's professionals who crave after both extra stops and greater colour depth, and in that area we're well served by what exists. There's also operating system and software support. If Abode and the Gimp projects decide not to support it as the hardware manufacturers don't. In turn there's a host of other viewer software (ie, Lightroom, OS X's Preview, etc.) that would need to have plugins or be rewritten to support it.

It's much easier said than done to introduce a new format, especially in light of Microsoft really screwing around in their attempts to get OO XML accepted as a standard ("it's free! Wait, it's not! No, it is! Not! Is!"). To compare it to PDF, I can whip up a document in LaTeX and compile it as a PDF which can be used and viewed anywhere in about two minutes, while Microsoft Word's OO XML is only supported natively in an expensive software package, and through plugins in one other. It's not exactly popular...

It'sthe same situation as exists right now with the music industry. Both oline stores and music companies both loved (and love) proprietary and DRM'd music formats. For all of that they have gradually caved in throughout 2007 and started making their songs available in MP3 format as that has been the single consistent thing that has been asked for in every survey and request for feedback. Why? You can play an MP3 anywhere. With nearly any other format you have to worry if your player will support both the format and it's DRM scheme.

I'm not going to get into the DRM thing here, I'm simply trying to point out that these proprietary/DRM'd formats usually had superior quality, but interoperability problems plagued them and they never made much headway with hardware manufacturers and other software companies - I spent eight years in Currys explaining this to customers, so believe me I know this. And now they are just giving up and going back to bog-standard MP3.

There are areas where proprietary standards thrive (medical records come to mind), but where a choice is available existing free standards are hard to displace.

Short version: It might be awesome photographic format, but it's catch 22 trying to get it out there and into the ecosystem. Microsoft might mean well, but they'll face huge inertia in having it accepted.

EDIT:
Al: Sorry
Cambo: I don't think closed standards are morally good or bad, but it doesn't make it any less of a lengthy and touchy subject for me.

Fajitas!

This dosn't look like the photography forum any more...