Marco.org

The Microsoft press release

This is great and all, but why do we care? It only has a purpose if it can replace JPEG for web-browser graphics. There’s no place for it in high-end photo processing and archival, since DNG does an excellent job of that (and I think it’s more open).

The license terms are lenient, but it’s not free, so it’s unlikely to be supported  by Firefox… ever. And I’m sure Apple will be reluctant to support it in Safari. Plus, we’ve had JPEG 2000 for years, which is far better than JPEG and similar in many ways to HD Photo, and hardly anything supports it (except Safari, actually), so nobody uses it.

Nice job, Microsoft, making yet another redundant product. At least you changed it from the original name, “Windows Media Photo”, so your precious Windows Media brand won’t be tarnished too badly by its failure.