Interested in Windows Media Photo?

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# Interested in Windows Media Photo? » Wagalulu - Microsoft » » Interested in Windows Media Photo? said on July 17, 2006 6:58 PM:

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# xpclient said on July 28, 2006 6:13 AM:

- Is WMPhoto intended only for photographic images or for print and web too?
- Will the format be supported in GDI+?
- Will there be a GUI authoring tool?
- Will Vista apps like Photo Gallery, Snipping tool, Picture Viewer support the format? Are tags supported too by these apps?
- What about Digital Image Suite?
- Will Expression Graphics Designer, Web Designer & Interactive Designer support WDP natively?
- Will and when will IE7, Windows Mail and other MSHTML based apps support WDP?
- Will it be supported in Office apps if not in 2007 versions?

# billcrow said on July 31, 2006 1:52 PM:

Hi, I'm Bill Crow, the Program Manager for Windows Media Photo.  Let's tackle your questions:

- Is WMPhoto intended only for photographic images or for print and web too?

We've very specifically targeted printing with support for CMYK and n-Channel pixel formats.  In fact, Windows Media Photo is the preferred image format for XML Paper Specification (XPS), the new printer spool file and portable document format being launched with Windows Vista.  Windows Media Photo is also designed to be a great web image format, with support for excellent compression, alpha channels, region decode, progressive decode and high performance compressed domain operations.  Of course, any data format for the web requires very broad support from a variety of client and server components.  As a brand new format, it will take a little time for this support to develop for Windows Media Photo.  However, it's already in development for several important "behind the scenes" web tasks from both Microsoft and our partners.

- Will the format be supported in GDI+?

No.  Microsoft has no plans for any feature changes to GDI+.  GDI+ has built-in support for several image formats, but it is not extensible, so new formats cannot be added without major changes.  Also, GDI+ does not support the wide range of pixel formats (including high dynamic range, wide gamut formats) supported by Windows Media Photo.  It's certainly possible to take an existing GDI+ based application and use the appropriate calls to WIC to add support for reading and writing Windows Media Photo files.  I'll see what we can do to put together a sample application on how this would be done.

- Will there be a GUI authoring tool?

Oh, I fully expect there will be many!  We've just barely introduced Windows Media Photo for developers, so there are no applications that I can make any announcements about yet.  I do have information on my blog (plus links to some basic utilties) for convertering between Windows Media Photo and other image formats supported by many authoring tools.  I'm sure we'll have a lot more to say about application support in the months ahead.

- Will Vista apps like Photo Gallery, Snipping tool, Picture Viewer support the format? Are tags supported too by these apps?

Vista Photo Gallery and Picture Viewer fully support Windows Media Photo.  This includes editing the image as well as the metadata.  (There are a few bugs in the Beta 2 release which have since been fixed and will be available with the upcoming RC1 release.)  As far as I know, the Snipping tool won't support Windows Media Photo in the first release.

- What about Digital Image Suite?
- Will Expression Graphics Designer, Web Designer & Interactive Designer support WDP natively?
- Will and when will IE7, Windows Mail and other MSHTML based apps support WDP?
- Will it be supported in Office apps if not in 2007 versions?

I'll lump all these questions together because the answer is basically the same.  We've just introduced Windows Media Photo as a component of XPS and as a new photo/image format for developers and device manufacturers.  We're not ready to make any announcements yet about support in various application software products or components.  As soon as we have accurate information about Windows Media Photo support in various apps, we'll be happy to share it.  Sorry I can't provide a more complete answer just yet.

Bill

# Software Information » Robert A. Wlodarczyk’s Blog (MSFT) : Interested in Windows Media Photo? said on January 25, 2008 2:00 PM:

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