It looks as though the HD war continues and this time Microsoft is bringing it to the digital photography market…so all you budding photographers out there pay attention as Microsoft may have the answer to all your photographic ailments.
The name of the new format? HD Photo. What does it do? Offers higher image quality, greater preservation of data and advanced features.
In more detail the format offers compression with up to twice the efficiency of JPEG, resulting in higher-quality and less damaging images that are one-half of the file size. Microsoft announced that it saves the entire original image and enables higher quality exposure and colour adjustment in the images.
Microsoft also announced the beta release of a set of HD Photo plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop software, developed with the help of Adobe.
The plug-ins support both the CS3 and CS2 versions of Adobe Photoshop software, and will be available for Window Vista, Windows XP, as well as Mac OS X (Universal Binary).
A beta version of the Windows plug-in is available today for download. Microsoft expects to release finished plug-ins, which will be free of charge, in approximately 60 days.