Microsoft launched a complete HD Photo plug-in for Photoshop

Microsoft has just released a complete version of the plug-in that enables the professional Photoshop image processing program to read and write files in HD Photo format that it calls JPEG XR standards.

The free download plug-in is for Windows and Mac OS X. Plug-in runs on Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, Photoshop CS2 or CS3.

Microsoft hopes the new HD Photo standard will eventually replace the existing JPEG standard. Among the new points that HD Photo brings: more efficient compression, richer colors, can save photos without losing data when compressed, run on camera software, and completely free. Support for this file format (called Windows Media Photo by Microsoft) has been built into Windows Vista.

HD Photo can also be used to present online images at various resolution levels, transmitting only the part of the image seen on the screen. This capability is useful for shrinking high resolution images without reducing the entire image size. This technology was used by Microsoft for its HD View software.

The image on the left is JPEG format, while the one on the right is HD Photo, encoded with Microsoft's scRGB color technology.

However, Microsoft also faces great challenges, which is convincing through this technology. Integrating HD Photo into Vista is a big step, and Adobe's approval (integrated into Photoshop) is an important mark, but the JPEG format is still very popular, and Microsoft is not easy to replace. change this fact overnight.

According to Microsoft, the final version of HD Photo was developed in collaboration with Pegasus Imaging Systems. This version looks quite similar to the previous test version. However, the completed version fixed the remaining bugs, blocked some security holes, and refined the standard code of Microsoft.

Van Han