Although the HD Photo format (previously known as Windows Media Photo) has been primarily used as part of the internals of Windows Vista, Microsoft has convinced the guardians of highly-compressible imaging formats, the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), to consider making HD Photo the basis of a new member of the JPEG family, JPEG XR.

HD Photo Features and Benefits

HD Photo offers support for high dynamic range (HDR) images, stores varying amounts of image information to make displaying lower-quality thumbnails easy, performs both lossless and lossy compression, provides better support for lower performance systems, and better image quality and better compression.

Discovering HD Photo 

Will HD Photo join the JPEG family? The balloting for JPEG members lasts until October 2007, but you can learn more about HD Photo right now from HD Photo project manager Bill Crow's blog, or by downloading the HD Photo specifications. If you have Adobe Photoshop CS2 or CS3, you can save or open HD Photo images wtih the HD Photo plug-in from Microsoft's downloads center.