Picture This: New Format Successor to JPEG

CIO — Thousands of photographs are posted to the Web every day in countries all over the world. Nearly all are JPEGs. But change may be on the way. In October, the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) voted on a replacement for the 20-year-old standard.

Standards bodies are, by definition, deliberative, so it's no surprise the committee had some points to argue over the past year.

To begin, they needed to make sure the new standard would truly be open since it came from a source many found suspect. Microsoft, in a move that had many knocking on the gift horse to see if it was hollow, offered the new JPEG-XR (extended range) format to the Joint Photographic Experts Group free of charge. Could this really be true?

"We've been convinced that yes, it is," says Louis Sharpe, JPEG committee member and part of the US delegation to the upcoming meeting in Kobe, Japan. Microsoft has agreed that the committee will hold the copyright to the new specifications currently under construction. Furthermore, for the software now in development, Microsoft's stated intention is that "it will be copyrighted to the JPEG committee to be given away under any kind of license that the JPEG committee decides," says Sharpe. "Which is perfect, because JPEG 2000 never quite had that, whereas old JPEG did have a free and open and pretty good implementation that was easy to understand and easy to use."

But laying aside any implications of Microsoft hegemony, the committee had another concern. They had already designated JPEG 2000 as the heir apparent to JPEG; a lot of time, money and technology had been invested in maturing this standard. "We didn't want to kill JPEG 2000 in its crib," says Sharpe, "but it's getting to be a pretty big baby; it's seven years old. So it did seem sensible to be open about it."

JPEG 2000 has struggled for acceptance ever since it was introduced, at least in part because of its size and its extremely comprehensive character. More than just a format standard, it is a complex system of related standards that include specifications not available in JPEG XR: sophisticated security encryptions that lock only parts of an image and wireless extensions that make it fault-tolerant over a noisy line.

"JPEG 2000 really did aim to be the be-all and end-all and true replacement for every JPEG application," says Sharpe.

Its fidelity and accuracy make it suitable for sophisticated Web applications like medical and satellite imaging, supporters claim, but it's not the choice for the amateur photographer who wants to post a few pics on the Web.

And that spot—the one where the amateur photographer snaps the digital image—could very well be where JPEG XR will change our view of the world from the Web.

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