Is the JPEG image format going to expire?

On March 10 at PMA 2007 exhibition, in Las Vegas, Microsoft said it launched a new image format for international standards. This format provides very high quality image quality with very small compression capacity.

HD Photo format is named from Microsoft Windows Media Photo program. JPEG format is used in most digital cameras and basic image formats. To date, this technology has a lifespan of 15 years.

Standard photo format in Microsoft's HD Photo format for photos with a small file size equal to one part of two JPEG images.

Both formats use compression techniques so that images are smaller and memory cards can hold more images. However, compressing image files makes the quality of the photos significantly reduced.

Microsoft said, HD Photo compression format will give a photo a lot smaller but very high quality. A photo in HD Photo format is small in size by one-half of a JPEG image.

Both HD Photo and JPEG image formats have advantages and disadvantages. JPEG is the most popular format, but experts must admit, when compressing images in this format, part of the image quality will be lost. However, this does not only happen with JPEG images but also with some other formats.

If compressed by the new standard HD Photo of Microsoft, the image will be lighter but the quality is very high and the image will not decrease. Besides, if compressing in the new format, users can interfere with color balance, lighting and contrast settings . which were previously tried only in TIF or RAW standard image formats. But if compressing an image the same size as a JPEG image, the size of the image file in these two standards may be 20 times higher.

JPEG compression standards are always up to date with new compression technologies to make a small-size image with quality not reduced. The final version of JPEG compression standard is version 2000.

Time will be the answer to whether HD Photo replaces the JPEG format in the printing industry and whether digital camera suppliers. Just know that, to support this format, Microsoft has integrated this format in the new Windows Vista software.

In June, Adobe and Microsoft will announce updates for CS3 and CS2 so that the Photoshop software can run on Apple's Vista, XP and OS X operating systems.

Nguyen Vu