By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 09:03:34 +0000

This sounds a lot like JPEG2000, a format that blows away the traditional JPG format which has become so common place nowadays. I’m all for anything that improves on compression ratios while retaining maximum quality, and this new one sounds even better thanks to a lossless mode. Sadly, it likely won’t take off. Why? Firstly, it is by Microsoft. Even if it is good, people will probably avoid it for no other reason than the fact that they do not like Microsoft. None of their other formats (WMV, WMA, etc) have ever really taken off either, so this is another reason this new image format will probably end up being no different. JPEG2000 would have been great, and I’m actually surprised it didn’t do better considering how popular digital photography has become over the past decade. People shoot in RAW, showing they do care about retaining everything that makes it so great to use. The main problem that plagues JPEG2000 involves licensing I think (greed in other words), and I can see Microsoft making the same mistake. Plus in Photoshop it is really slow, especially with high resolution images. Hopefully someone in the field of open source will come up with a similar format one of these days. Just look at what FLAC has done for lossless music compression as an example. I have no doubt something freely available for public use that did everything Microsoft’s new format is promising would take off quickly, becoming the new default format everyone uses.

Comments on: Microsoft’s .jpg challenge

By: Reader's Write