Microsoft have announced their new image format which is a competitor to standards like JPEG and PNG.
Windows Media Photo is a new file format for continuous-tone still images that surpasses the limitations of existing image formats.
Windows Media Photo supports a wide range of features including:
· Multiple color formats for display or print
· Fixed or floating point high dynamic range image encoding
· Lossless or high quality lossy compression
· Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions
· Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode
Windows Media Photo delivers a lightweight, high performance algorithm with a small memory footprint that enables practical, in-device encoding and decoding.
News source: MicrosoftWindows Media Photo License
XPS implementations of Windows Media Photo require the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit. Contact Microsoft at wmla@microsoft.com with XPS WMPhoto License in the Subject field to obtain the Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit.
