Microsoft Corp. unveiled a new photo format it claims will provide better quality at half the size of a JPEG image. Windows Media Photo (WMP) will be built into the next-generation of Windows, called Vista.
"One of the biggest drivers for upgrading computers is digital photography, so anything we do to make digital photography better is good for Windows," said Bill Crow, senior program manager for WMP. Crow presented the technology publicly for the first time at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here Wednesday (May 24).
Microsoft has been working on the photo format with unnamed partners, including camera makers, for nearly four years. "It’s been very much driven by their feedback," said Crow.
Windows Media Photo takes a significantly new approach to the same basic discrete cosine transform technology used in JPEG. Crow described the algorithm as a bi-orthoginal lapped transform based on published work from Microsoft Research. The format also includes a fresh approach to areas such as color space and color conversion.
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