There is a new image file format that’s going to come with Vista, and it might be a good thing if it is quickly adopted by other developers. It could be an alternative to tif or jpg format (though the next version of IE won’t support it). The Windows Media Photo (.wmp) format promises a higher dynamic range, a larger color gamut (with a new color space, scRGB), and a far more efficient compression algorithm than jpg or jpg 2K. I don’t understand what this means, but it will have fixed or floating point numbers so that information outside the visible range won’t be discarded.
Right now, when you save to a particular color space, information that falls outside of that space gets discarded. In wmp format this information is kept, which is how, when you make subsequent tonal adjustments to the file, there is data there to plug into the new tonal levels. Bill Crow, the presenter, and Thomas Knoll got into a very interesting back and forth that was totally over the heads of 90% of us on this point. It had something to do with scene referred space and highlight room, and if there really was data there. When they settle the issue, let me know. No, don't. It'll just hurt my head.
My opinion is that the success of this file format, whatever its benefits, is going to come down to third party support. A solo Vista OS compatible format won't mean much. I certainly won't be able to open up an image in this format in CS2, though I probably will in CS3. But what about my clients?
Check out Bill Crow’s blog for more information than you’ll ever want or need: http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/ .
I'm going to try to distill this into something humans can read and post it on my blog soon... I wish I could have heard Thomas Knoll's challenges-- a lot of what Bill Crow is saying, on the face, is bunk and goes contrary to the CIE model, until you understand it a bit further.
Posted by: Josh Wand | June 30, 2006 at 04:51 AM
File this one in the "Poor Execution" department. Due to Microsoft's persistence in using a proprietary format, I don't see this catching on in the slightest.
I understand MS's move in creating an alternative to jpeg in light of the Jpeg patent lawsuits (luckily the patents were found invalid recently). By creating a new and better format than jpeg, they won't get sued over using it and at the same time, they can rack in some good dough in licensing fees. But, what makes them think the industry will abandon one proprietary format for another? The jpeg patent suits mark the second time a proprietary image format has cause large issues. The first time was when Compuserve started suing companies that utilized .gif since they owned the LZW compression algorithms used in the format.
During the LZW suits, some open-source developers created the PNG format as a freely useable, open and better format to replace GIF. The LZW patent expired (and development of Internet Explorer stagnated) before PNG really caught on on the internet.
In my opinion WMP is an example of how clueless Microsoft is. With the strong push by consumers for open raw formats, and MS's struggles in trying to garner support for their new (sorta) open office document formats you'd think they would realize that no one wants to be locked into proprietary crud anymore. They need to realize that some open-endedness can actually be more profitable in the long run (as demonstrated my many small companies such as IBM, Apple, Sun, Sysco Systems, etc) than forced upgrades and licensing fees from consumer lock-in.
If companies wanted to pay out the nose for a proprietary format, Jpeg2000 would be in wide use today but it's not.
Posted by: Dan | June 30, 2006 at 07:45 AM