JPEG XR (HD Photo) is now ISO/IEC 29199-2
I’ve mentioned JPEG XR before, along with some links to information about some of the advantages that the digital picture format brings.
It was pleasing to note this morning that the specification has now been ratified by ISO/IEC as IS29199-2.
Bill Crow talks about the process a little on his blog today;
The many innovations delivered in JPEG XR originated from over ten years of research and development at Microsoft. And through our participation as a member of the JPEG Committee, we’ve been able to deliver additional improvements and create an International standard available to everyone.
So the next question everyone asks is “when will it be available in a camera?” Since I don’t work for a camera company, I can’t answer that question. But I’m pleased and proud that because JPEG XR is now a free International standard, there’s very little standing in the way of making that happen!
He also mentions some of the key benefits of the format;
Better compression – JPEG XR offers improved efficiency compared to JPEG, and the type of compression artifacts are often less objectionable than the typical JPEG compression artifacts. JPEG XR offers a very wide range of compression levels, including perceptively lossless or mathematically lossless compression. Regardless of your requirements, JPEG XR probably offers a compression option that’s ideal for that scenario.
More image formats – JPEG XR supports 8bpc (bits per channel), 16bpc and 32bpc, as well as several special bit depth formats. Pixel values can be stored as either integers, scaled fixed point numbers or full floating point values; this provides full support for numerous high dynamic range (HDR) imaging scenarios, as well as support for wide gamut color spaces. In addition to 3-channel RGB, JPEG XR supports monochrome, CMYK and n-channel formats up to 16 independent channels. many of these formats also support an alpha channel. This wide range of image formats allows for dramatically better image quality and allows this single new file format to effectively replace many previous formats that were required for specific scenarios.
Advanced decoding features – JPEG XR provides progressive decoding, allowing lower resolution previews or specific cropped areas to be displayed without the need to decode the entire image. Additionally, JPEG XR images can be cropped, rotated, flipped and resized (within certain constraints) without ever needing to decode and then re-encode the image. That means these operations are much, much faster and no additional image quality is lost due to the additional encoding steps.
Marius Oiaga at Softpedia has a short story about the standard, and highlights the fact that it is freely available to potential implementers;
Having been approved as an international standard, JPEG XR is, of course, available for free to all interested parties. In this regard, software publishers and hardware manufacturers can easily integrate support for the new file format into their products. Of course that interoperability is the biggest barrier that stands in the way of the adoption of the new standard. But with Windows already offering support for JPEG XR, the ecosystem of software and hardware solutions built around the operating system could soon follow.
If you want to learn a little more then the press release from the JPEG committee can be found here.
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This is very exciting news. I’m waiting for Canon to announce its support for JPEG XR. It might take some time, but I hope digital camera manufacturers quickly adopt it.
I share those hopes, I’m a Nikon owner, but the implementation hopes are shared.