Whatever happened to Jpeg XR (HD Photo)? | The Coffeehouse

intelman

I notice paint in Windows 7 does not support Jpeg XR. I have not really seen much support anywhere. Mainly flickr, Windows Live Photo's, Picasa....

Is this format left to die?

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Photo

Wikipedia said:
JPEG supports bit depths of 8 and 12 bits; HD Photo supports bit depths of up to 32 bits.

I have 24bit JPEGs, is there anything wrong with them then?

Wikipedia said:
While JPEG uses 8 × 8 blocks for its frequency transformation, HD Photo uses 4 × 4 blocks. 2 × 4 and 2 × 2 transformations are also defined for special cases.

Wikipedia said:
In JPEG, the image DC components from the DCT are encoded by left-prediction. In HD Photo, blocks are grouped into macroblocks of 16 × 16 pixels

So, that means, compression is worse, because the pixel blocks are smaller?
Well, I would say, the format is doomed. If I'd want to share photos I'd either use JPEG or PNG. If I need high quality I'd use RAW image formats, Bitmaps or PSDs and use a lossless compression like RAR before passing it along.

intelman

In reply to Dodo

#May 5th @ 2:50 AM

Problem is raw formats require additional codecs. No service supports those either. Plus, there are no 64bit codecs for programs like 64bit lightroom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Photo

The DCT, the frequency transformation used by JPEG, is slightly lossy because of roundoff error. HD Photo uses a transformation called the Photo Core Transform (PCT), a type of Hadamard transform, which resembles a 4 × 4 DCT but is lossless.

I like Jpeg XR for compressing large lossless images. I have had similar results with saving an image as a jpeg with photoshop, but that was on a trial basis, so I am stuck with free tools.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

In reply to intelman

#May 5th @ 7:09 AM

Well, the lossy compression of JPEGs is their advantage. As said, they're good for sharing photos with friends because the file size can be very small without an impact on visible quality. For high quality images, I prefer them uncompressed and I think Adobe's special bitmap containers support up to 64bit uncompressed lossless bitmaps. Paint won't be able to open those, even though they're bitmaps, but I'd not really see a reason why I would really need a compressed format. It's not quite suited for the application of high resolution raw quality images anyway. High quality images are usually used where detail matters, and not storage capacity.

magicalclick

That's indeed odd that MS has no strong support to the format. Anyway, Paint is garbage, MS knows that as well. Paint .Net is supposed to replace Paint. Get Paint .Net instead. Also it supports HD Photo format with plug-in I think.

intelman

In reply to magicalclick

#May 5th @ 1:33 PM

Paint.NET is nice. It is when sending a jpeg xr photo to someone else is when things get confusing. "How do I open this?" This happens for a few other images, I've had Jpeg 2000 fail for some people.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

In reply to magicalclick

#May 5th @ 1:33 PM

You haven't played with Windows 7 very much, have you? Smiley

magicalclick

In reply to Dodo

#May 5th @ 1:34 PM

I am not sure what you mean. I am runing Win7 Beta.

magicalclick

In reply to intelman

#May 5th @ 1:34 PM

That's more important for sure. Win7 explore should be updated. Also WL Photo Gellery should support it as well.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to magicalclick

#May 5th @ 1:42 PM

WL Photo Gallery is one of the few applications that does support HD Photo (aka JPEG XR).

magicalclick

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#May 5th @ 1:53 PM

LOL really? I have it, but I have never tried it. I guess that's fine than, just tell people to install XL Essentials.

exoteric
I : Next<I>

Supposed to replace Paint? I suppose a lot of things are supposed to replace a lot of things, like Notepad+ is "supposed" to replace Notepad.

I remember waiting forever for JPEG 2000. Now we have JPEG XR. Is that even fully standardized yet?

But even so, unless it's in Paint, it doesn't exist. Okay, if it's in Internet Explorer it does heh

dschonbe

Hi. I’m Dan Schonberg, and I work on JPEG XR / HD Photo at Microsoft.

JPEG XR is still in the standardization process. Although the standard is nearly complete, since the standardization process is still ongoing Windows 7 does not yet “label” the format JPEG XR. If you are interested, you can follow the progress via the JPEG website (http://www.jpeg.org).

On the other hand, HD Photo is fully supported in Windows 7. It is used in a variety of locations throughout Windows 7. If you would like to create your own HD Photo files, the easiest ways are through use of Windows Live Photo Gallery (http://download.live.com/photogallery) or the WIC Explorer (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=A6D6EC6A-E4F2-405E-842D-7C3BCB5B1390&displaylang=en).

In regard to some of the comments about compression capability:

In addition to supporting lossless compression, JPEG XR / HD Photo actually has better compression than JPEG for lossy compression. The 4x4 transform is applied hierarchically, which makes it effectively 16x16, or even larger when using the overlapping feature at the transform block boundaries. This allows the transform to avoid many of the pitfalls of block based transforms. The design also supports high dynamic range image handling, with extended bit depths and even floating point and pseudo-floating point pixel representations.

One final note. With the final standardization of the format just around the corner, more news will be emerging soon.

Thanks!

magicalclick

In reply to dschonbe

#May 6th @ 5:58 PM

Wow, that's nice to hear. Just my thought, Why not make it .jpg2? I just think JPEG XR and HD Photo doesn't click for me. .hdp may be ok for me. Somehow .hdp makes my eyes hurt with all the lines up and down.