Not long ago, Microsoft submitted its HD Photo technology (tentatively titled “JPEG XR”) to the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) for considering as an industry standard. Now, it has been approved! Although I was a little skeptical about Microsoft’s motive, they seem to be committed to make the HD Photo as an open format. The highlights of the new format are:
- Pixel formats at 8, 16, or 32 bits per channel including high dynamic range (HDR) support using fixed or floating point representations.
- Progressive decoding architecture allows efficient decoding of an image at any resolution, quality, or any selected region by processing only a portion of the entire compressed file.
- Support lossless and very efficient lossy compression up to twice as efficient as the original JPEG format.
