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The company claims that the new image format can display better images with file sizes only half of those of a .jpg. Microsoft has been demonstrating 24:1 compression Windows Media Photo format files that are noticeably more detailed than the JPEG and JPEG 2000 formats.

According to Microsoft, the new specification offers multiple colour formats for display or print, fixed or floating point high dynamic range image encoding, lossless or high quality lossy compression, efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions and minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode.

Of course, the issue of licensing immediately comes to mind. Both the JPG and the rival GIF format were hampered by licensing claims. However, Microsoft is asserting that 'licensing will not be a restriction'.

The full Windows Media Photo format file specification is available on the Microsoft web site.