Microsoft tries to improve Vista photo features
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Redmond sees Windows Vista as a big step up over XP for photographers, but it's adding more image-management options through Windows Live Photo Gallery.
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special coverage Aiming to re-create the excitement of Windows 95, Microsoft is trying to turn Vista into its next big win.
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Get a closer look at some of the new features in Vista Service Pack 1.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has discontinued a line of digital photo software, saying that the functions can now be found in Windows Vista and other Microsoft software. Copies of Digital Image Suite will be available while supplies last and existing customers will be supported through April 30, 2010 or three years from purchase date, whichever comes first, Microsoft said on its Digital Image Suite Web page . Microsoft posted the note on May 10. The software is also still available on Amazon.com. Digital Image Suite helps users organize their digital photos in files and arrange them in galleries and slide shows. It also includes tools to improve images by doing things such as correcting exposure and fixing red eye. When Microsoft launched Vista, it often highlighted the digital image features included in the operating system. The Digital Image Suite Web page now points visitors to Windows Vista page describing photo management features in Vista, including editing and organizational capabilities.
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Microsoft Corp. has released a near-final version of its new Windows Vista operating system to a select group of technical experts who are testing the software.
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Microsoft is working on a variety of innovative photo projects, ranging from experiments with its 3D maps offering to massive panoramic photos.
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Microsoft wants to make it easy for users to upgrade among editions of the next Windows.
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The U.S. Department of Justice and state officials want more information about changes that Microsoft says it needs to make in schedule for releasing Vista documentation.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ will soon submit a new photo format to an international standards organization that it says offers higher quality images with better compression, the company said on Thursday. The format, HD Photo -- recently renamed from Windows Media Photo -- is taking aim at the JPEG format, a 15-year old technology still widely used in digital cameras and image applications. Both formats take images and use compression to make the file sizes smaller so more photos can fit on a memory card. During compression, however, the quality of the photo tends to degrade. Microsoft said HD Photo's lightweight algorithm causes less damage to photos during compression, with higher-quality images that are half the size of JPEG. The format can also accommodate "lossless" and "lossy" compression, two methods of compressing photo data with different effects on image quality. Microsoft said adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bitmap formats. Although JPEG is aging, it has been modified to help keep it up to date. The latest JPEG 2000 format features better image quality while also supporting lossless and lossy compression. The original JPEG did only lossy. Time will tell whether HD Photo can supplant JPEG by gaining the support of printer, camera, and application vendors. But Microsoft is supporting the format in products such as its Vista and XP OSes and has already gained an important vendor ally. In the next two months, Adobe Systems and Microsoft will release a plug-ins for CS3 and CS2 versions of its widely used Photoshop program for Vista, XP, and Apple's OS X. Also, Microsoft also has built a HD Photo Device Porting Kit so hardware manufacturers can support it. Â
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PC owners who bought late last year and planned to take advantage of Microsoft's Windows Vista Express Upgrade program have found that their Vista OS upgrades are taking longer than expected to arrive. They are not amused.
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Now that Windows Vista has been unleashed onto an expecting public, a number of minor issues have cropped up in the new operating system. Microsoft has already posted a handful of hotfixes for those running into issues, although they aren't critical enough to be published on Microsoft Update.
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Microsoft Corp. has fixed a problem that made it difficult for users of the most recent Windows Mobile devices to synch with PCs running Vista.
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Installing Vista is simpler than past versions of Windows; here's a peek at some key installation screens and a few tools to make your upgrade easier.
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Microsoft Corp. has submitted a test version of its Windows Vista operating system with features that make it easier to use non-Microsoft programs to search PC hard drives, according to a report issued by the Justice Department Friday.
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The new version lets customers upgrade a virtual Windows XP system to Windows Vista and includes USB 2.0 support, among many other new features.
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Users running Vista can supposedly use flash memory sticks to improve boot-up times and boost the start-up speed of their most important software.
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Raw image editing and cataloging software gets support for Windows Vista and Adobe file formats.