The new format of Microsoft will replace JPEG?

10th March 2007

Microsoft has announced preparations for release of plug-in for Adobe Photoshop allowing to read and save the images in the format of Microsoft HD Photo. The program, developed by Microsoft together with the company Pegasus Imaging and Adobe, is now available as a demo version on the site of the software giant. The version for owners of PowerPC and Mac computers based on Intel is expected in the next two weeks. The final version is scheduled to go on sale in April. The Presentation of Microsoftâ€™s product at the event of Photo Marketing Association was held by Josh Weisberg, the head of the company department of work with digital images. Moreover Weisberg reported about embedding of support HD Photo Products into products of some hardware companies. Among them are Taiwan Sunplus Technology and Novatek producing sensors of image processing, as well as Ability Enterprise, a producer of cameras, developing design for well-known brands. Microsoft has spent a lot of time on development of HD Photo and hopes it will replace a ubiquitous JPEG. Weisberg believes that cameras can capture much more information than when using JPEG. HD Photo compresses images more efficiently, supports larger number of colors and propagates the details of the images much better, says Microsoft. The expected plug-in will allow photographers to transfer files of format "raw " into HD Photo and will work in Photoshop CS2 and CS3. In addition, Microsoft has announced support for HD Photo in Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.