Microsoft finishes HD Photo plug-ins

Stephen Withers
Friday, 07 December 2007 11:09

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft has released final versions of its HD Photo plug-ins for Photoshop.

Offered for Windows and Mac OS X, the plug-ins allow Photoshop CS2 or CS3 to read and write files in Microsoft's HD Photo format, previously known as Windows Media Photo.

According to Microsoft's Bill Crow, the plug-ins also work in a limited manner with older versions of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, although no support is provided.

Windows Vista already provides HD Photo support.

The company is working to have HD Photo adopted as JPEG XR (extended range), and has agreed to waive royalties. The Joint Photographic Experts Group has given in-principle support, but it it likely to be late 2008 before a standard is agreed. Independent standardisation would likely lead to broader support for the format.

HD Photo provides higher image quality by allowing more bits of colour information per pixel, allowing the capture of all the data from modern camera sensors. It also allows for progressive decoding of a file so the image can be quickly rendered at a lower quality or so only the portion of interest needs to be decoded.

Furthermore, the compression scheme used is more efficient than that of the commonly used JPEG, giving the same quality in half the space. More importantly, it means higher quality images can be stored in the same space.

These characteristics make HD Photo suitable for in-camera use, but it is not clear at this stage if manufacturers will broadly adopt it.

Users of the HD Photo plug-in beta are warned that software will expire on December 31.