Microsoft have unveiled a completely new image file format, called Windows Media Photo (.wmp files), at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, which will apparently be of better quality at half the size of a comparable JPEG image.

“WMP captures more of the raw information of photos to enable better presentation, editing and compression. Crow said WMP will easily enable 25:1 compression ratios for most uses of digital photography. That compares to a maximum of about 12:1 for consumer JPEG images before images visibly degrade.”

Do we need another file format for photography, or is the JPEG format good enough already? Will the .wmp format be supported by the camera manufacturers, or will it become a forgotten part of Windows Vista?

Website: EETimes - Microsoft beats JPEG with new photo format for Vista