Microsoft Introduces WDP Image Format
By
Mike Pasini, The Imaging Resource
(Thursday, May 25, 2006 - 23:40 EDT)
A direct competitor to JPEG for in-device image storage, the new format promises much smaller file sizes than JPEG with image quality similar to JPEG 2000.
Microsoft today introduced Windows Media Photo, a new image format using the WDP file extension that promises "image quality comparable to JPEG 2000 with computational and memory performance more closely comparable to JPEG."
The WDP compression algorithm is efficient enough to run in-device and can deliver "mathematically lossless compressed images that are typically 2.5 times smaller than the original uncompressed data," the company said.
According to the specification document, "Windows Media Photo uses a very high performance reversible color space conversion, a reversible lapped biorthogonal transform and an advanced non-arithmetic entropy coding scheme. The combination of these new technologies offers extremely high compression efficiency with minimal loss of important image content. Windows Media Photo typically surpasses other lossy image compression technologies in preserving high frequency detail while simultaneously minimizing objectionable spatial artifacts."
Licensing plans were not disclosed.
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