Microsoft releases free Microsoft Photo Info add-in for Windows

Microsoft Photo Info

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/photoinfo.mspx

Microsoft Photo Info enables easy editing of "metadata" for digital photographs from inside Windows Explorer
Published: January 22, 2007

Microsoft Photo Info is a new software add-in for Microsoft Windows that allows photographers to add, change and delete common "metadata" properties for digital photographs from inside Windows Explorer. It also provides enhanced "hover tips" and additional sort properties for digital photographs in Explorer (in Details view).

pity it doesn't support Pentax RAW files. There was a mini-campaign about this a while back. I believe all those who emailed Microsoft to add Pentax to the list got a reply at the time. Looks like we need a few more K10D owners to create demand.

--
Steve

http://www.pbase.com/steephill

This is in hand, James O'Neil is in dialogue with Pentax.
--
Richard Day - 'Carpe Diem!'
Gloucester UK

This quote from the bottom of Microsoft's Web page (see OP) sez it all for me . . .

"Supported file types

The initial release of Microsoft Photo Info supports the following common image file types: JPEG, TIFF, WDP, HDP (HD Photo), NEF, CR2, and CRW1. Support for additional file formats is under consideration for a future release."

They never said that for their RAW file viewer when it came out . . .
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/raw.mspx

--
Cheers,
Greg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gtjkb

It does not matter to me because it is using .NET framework. .NET is a gaping security hole in your machine with more bugs that I care to count.
There are other tools that can do the same job as well or better.

The photographers in Microsoft's area for "Professional" photographer either use C*non or N*kon. The software they have for tutorials is PS and for the non-deluxe version of their digital imaging software has had all RAW support removed.

I would imaging that all support for anything other than C*non and N*kon with MS products is a pipe dream.

PDL

No PEF but not even universal DNG. Microsoft must hate Adobe very muchl.
--
Fero, London
My blog: http://feronovak.blogspot.com/index.html

"Edit"?

Does that mean we can change ou K10D pics to read that they were taken by a 30D, post them in their forum, then sit back and listen to them complain that they were never able to get such good shots out of "their" 30D?

richardday said:

This is in hand, James O'Neil is in dialogue with Pentax.

Click to expand...

I am, although that is about enabling Windows vista to provide live preview.

This showed up on the internal "UK photographers" discussion group today, but I'm having the week from hell and haven't had a chance to look at it yet.

If it does what I think it does (i.e. just reads exif data) it may just be a couple of registry hacks to enable support for DNG and PEF. However you wouldn't get Pentax specific info from the maker notes - like which lens was used.

I'll try to find someone who's behind this in Redmond, however with 70,000 people working for Microsoft it's a bit like looking for the right person to ask in a medium sized town ... Richard asked me a fairly simple question yesterday and I'm still trying to find the person who can answer it. {sigh}

dsowner said:

No PEF but not even universal DNG. Microsoft must hate Adobe very
muchl.

Click to expand...

Microsoft wanted to include PDF support in office 2007 and Adobe threatened legal action ... so you might think there's bad blood ... but it's more complicated than that. If Microsoft hated adobe there wouldn't be nearly so many flash turds on Microsoft.com. Nor so many PDFs.

I suspect the supported formats are down to what the people working on V1 felt were important. More may come - there is a mail alias [email protected] for feedback, and I've got some feelers out about this internally

PDL said:

The photographers in Microsoft's area for "Professional"
photographer either use C*non or N*kon. The software they have for
tutorials is PS and for the non-deluxe version of their digital
imaging software has had all RAW support removed.

I would imaging that all support for anything other than C*non and
N*kon with MS products is a pipe dream.

Click to expand...

I went through this with the peope behind RAW image viewer which is also available from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/default.mspx

Basically Canon and Niikon have libraries which developers can use to get stuff out of NEF and CR2 files. Pentax don't. The RAW viewer was just a lash up to call those libraries.

Richard mentioned I'd been talking to Pentax UK, and basically I'm trying to get them to think about this: Photo-lab is closed, it doesn't let me write a bit of code to get stuff out of RAW. Photo browser is mostly useless under XP and abjectly pointless under vista, so the sensible thing would be to extend the Windows shell not write another browser. I was talking to someone fairly senior and I think he sees the sense of it - but whether that will make it through to the engineers in Japan is a whole other case.

Now DNG. Adobe should provide all these bits, but since the new version of acrobat reader doesn't support preview in Windows Vista and Outlook 2007, I think that's a slim hope. There's no reason why Pentax should as it isn't their format as such. Which leaves Microsoft to pick it up...

Maxwell Smart said:

Microsoft Photo Info

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/photoinfo.mspx

Click to expand...

I got lucky and someone put me in touch with the person responsible for the code , his opening was

"We dont have support for a number of file formats that you would expect to see. " - even when running on XP this tool uses the Windows Imaging Codecs from Vista ... to cut a long story short only Canon and Nikon had codecs that were anywhere near ready, and the system has been coded to reject file types which it wasn't tried out with.

This will change after the next release, which will come when there are decent number of Codecs out there - expected to be between March and June (and those dates can be blown off course by all manner of things).

Whether there will be a Pentax or Adobe will write Codecs for their formats remains to be seen ... There's nothing to stop someone else writing a Codec for DNG.

OK - so I went out and loaded the "tool". It works just fine on some JPEG's although I have a few from the early days of my *ist Ds that it will not save too - not a big deal.

The idea of having vendors write their own thing is somewhat of a benefit, in that the vendor is in control of keeping access to its custom formats in control. I would imaging that MS has not talked to Pentax since MS only talks to the biggest players in the field. Minor players have to seek out MS. With Pentax/Hoya stuff going on - I am sure that Pentax has "other" things to do.

As for Adobe - why would they want to support MS? If Adobe can't charge to "do it for you" (i think Adobe programmers write their own ACR code) they won't.

The MS tool does not use the © symbol (hold down a Alt key use the key pad - 0169) why? (send MS a note -- as if i will get an answer)

PDL

PDL said:

The MS tool does not use the © symbol (hold down a Alt key use the
key pad - 0169) why? (send MS a note -- as if i will get an answer)

Click to expand...

You know I work for Microsoft ? And I got to talk to guy responsible for the tool. If you can be more specific I'll get it infront him

James O'Neill said:

"We dont have support for a number of file formats that you would
expect to see. " - even when running on XP this tool uses the
Windows Imaging Codecs from Vista ... to cut a long story short
only Canon and Nikon had codecs that were anywhere near ready, and
the system has been coded to reject file types which it wasn't
tried out with.

Click to expand...

This mail just came in, it sounds like the tool shiped with "close to final" code from C & N. Or possibly Microsoft released their code to the public quicker than they did

Subject: FW: Nikon Codec for Windows Vista is now available

Very cool announcement if your readers care about photography.

Some background:

This is a very significant “last piece in the puzzle” to improving the imaging architecture in Windows. Vista shipped with a new driver model called WIC – Windows Imaging Codecs. These codecs provide a standard way to interface with image files, accessing the image bits as well as metadata. So now applications have a standard API both to decode image bits, and to access the title, comments, rating and other metadata associated with that image. Windows ships with codecs for the standard image file formats (jpeg, tiff, bmp, png, etc…). And 3rd parties are encourage to provide codecs for their proprietary formats. (WIC is also available as a redistributable for XP.)

Nikon is the first to step to the plate with a codec for their raw image format (.NEF).

If you shoot RAW and plug in a Nikon camera to your Vista box, the photo acquisition process will import your .NEF files, then launch Photo Gallery. Photo Gallery will notice it doesn’t have a codec installed, and vector you off to the Nikon site to get one. Once you install it, Photo Gallery allows you to work with your RAW files the same as your jpegs.

James O'Neill said:

Sent: Friday, January 26, 2007 9:35 AM
Subject: Nikon Codec for Windows Vista is now available

Click to expand...

James O'Neill said:

I am very pleased to announce that Nikon has released the NEF RAW
codec for Windows Vista.

Click to expand...

James O'Neill said:

The codec is available from http://www.nikonimglib.com/nefcodec/ or
by using the Windows Photo Gallery download service.

Click to expand...

Sorry, James, but that's hogwash. I also worked for MS in Redmond but trying to keep things objective.

Why Microsoft can't pcikup DNG and PEF decoders code from freely available Dave Coffin's dcraw.c? Why a single guy Dave at his free time can figure all this out and MS can't? My guess? It's a GPL license that'll force MS to open their code if they use parts of dcraw.

What exactly MS needs from Adobe for DNG support that Bibble and Silkypix (both essentially one man operations) didn't get? Adobe makes the DNG spec freely available and doesn't ask for any royalties (how non MS!) My guess? Words "generic" and "open" aren't favorites in MS lexicon esepcially when applied to data format.

Even why to go this far. Our forum's own GordonBGood and some guy from Russian forum wrote and disatributed a Java program that decodes and analyzes DNG (and PEF I believe). I saw the code - it's nor rocket science beleive me.

James O'Neill said:

PDL said:

The photographers in Microsoft's area for "Professional"
photographer either use C*non or N*kon. The software they have for
tutorials is PS and for the non-deluxe version of their digital
imaging software has had all RAW support removed.

I would imaging that all support for anything other than C*non and
N*kon with MS products is a pipe dream.

Click to expand...

I went through this with the peope behind RAW image viewer which is
also available from

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/default.mspx

Basically Canon and Niikon have libraries which developers can use
to get stuff out of NEF and CR2 files. Pentax don't. The RAW viewer
was just a lash up to call those libraries.

Richard mentioned I'd been talking to Pentax UK, and basically I'm
trying to get them to think about this: Photo-lab is closed, it
doesn't let me write a bit of code to get stuff out of RAW. Photo
browser is mostly useless under XP and abjectly pointless under
vista, so the sensible thing would be to extend the Windows shell
not write another browser. I was talking to someone fairly senior
and I think he sees the sense of it - but whether that will make it
through to the engineers in Japan is a whole other case.

Now DNG. Adobe should provide all these bits, but since the new
version of acrobat reader doesn't support preview in Windows Vista
and Outlook 2007, I think that's a slim hope. There's no reason
why Pentax should as it isn't their format as such. Which leaves
Microsoft to pick it up...

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/klopus

Can't? Won't. Microsoft have simply decided to get out of the business of providing any RAW support themselves. Instead, they've created the WIC framework in Windows Vista that allows vendors to provide and support codecs for their own RAW formats. Why does this Photo Info tool support Canon and Nikon but not Pentax? From the information James has posted, it's because C and N had working codecs they could provide to Microsoft for inclusion in the tool, but P didn't.

Personally, I think it'll be very disappointing if Pentax (or any vendor) don't have a RAW codec ready for the retail launch of Windows Vista on Tuesday. They've had plenty of time.

James O'Neill said:

You know I work for Microsoft ? And I got to talk to guy
responsible for the tool. If you can be more specific I'll get it
infront him

Click to expand...

Shh... James, don't say this too loud, a lot of people could come and chase you with torches...

BTW, Ubuntu works fine on my laptop, just waiting for the UFRaw plugin working with K10D .PEF...

--
-----------------------------------------
Silvio
Rome, GMT+1

Well, after sending in a comment using this tool to MS and getting no response - the next thing to do is to flood Pentax with "when are you going to remove your head from -- the sand -- your whatever -- and get back into the game?" questions. If Pentax wants to keep up with the N*kon/C*non -- er Jones -- then they need to get on the ball.

Another question - who really wrote the codec's MS or the "other guys". If it was MS - then shame on MS for not thinking 'inside the box'. (I just purchased Ad*be Elements 5.0 since the MS software will not read all my RAW files -- 21GB worth from my New Zealand trip in Dec 06 -- to bad MS - you lost another customer) If it was the "other guys" then Pentax needs to get on the ball.

My question to MS was (i hit a d instead of a t in the word sent) "Have you contacted any vendors other that C*non & N*kon? or do they contact you."

The last time I sent a message to MS about their product - they offered to buy it back - not fix it - but buy it back.

sad - really sad.

PDL

It's safe to assume the codecs were written by the "other guys". Microsoft are very clear that they will not be providing RAW codecs for Windows Vista - they're only supplying codecs for a handful of the standard formats (JPEG, TIFF, etc).

That said, I'd imagine there's been close contact between C/N and Microsoft's engineers to advise on the codec development.