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Archive for June 11th, 2007

Simply put, not much.

Popular Photography has an article in their new July issue about the new features photographers can expect to find in Windows Vista. The article lists 4 features to look forward to.

1. Windows Photo Gallery which allows you to add IPTC information to your files and also provides the ability to make slideshows and videos. You can also search for this information using Windows Search.
2. Windows will create thumbnails of RAW files and will also import them into the viewer. It will do this through the use of a codec which each camera manufacturer must provide.
3. If you get the full Media Center Edition you can make slideshows and play them right on the television.
4. Vista also provides support for high bit rate monitors which can take advantage of High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. This will go by the name Windows Color System.

So that’s it. That’s the big list. This is the stellar, whiz bang feature set to get you all excited about upgrading to Vista. I have to say, this list is pretty lame. Nothing wrong with Popular Photography in any way (I’ve subscribed to their magazine for a few years), but if a magazine of their caliber can only come up with 4, pretty flimsy reasons to upgrade; I really don’t see any point. At least not for the sake of photography.

Photo gallery that supports RAW and IPTC? Anyone who is using something other than a compact point and shoot camera already has a full featured application that already handles this.

Thumbnails of RAW images and the ability to import them? Again, anyone using RAW is far beyond relying on Windows to import their images. The people I know handle this through Adobe, DxO, Nik, Bibble, Iview or some other tool dedicated to the function. I can’t see a serious amateur using the built in Windows RAW importer for their images. Adobe updates their ACR on a regular basis. Are we really expected to believe Microsoft will pump out new RAW updates monthly? Yeah, right!

Furthermore, this is a pretty weak feature set for photographers considering Microsoft recently purchased all assets of Iview Media Pro. Iview imports, catalogs, displays and edits images. Seems like MS is doing just enough to tease and frustrate users so they will upgrade to their full featured version. I had hoped MS would put more of the Expression Media features into Vista to at least try and show they were serious about photographers.

As a side note, you can probably expect MS to update the RAW converters within the new Expression Media product, but I don’t see the same patches coming out for Windows itself. Again this is purely my opinion.

$400 to get Windows Ultimate so you can play images on the TV, plus the cost of the machine needed to run it? Oh please! It would be better to save the money for a new lens. There are plenty of dedicated devices out there costing hundreds less than would better suited for the job.

Windows Color System isn’t used by anyone, yet. It’s for future expansion. Maybe in 6 months to a year it will be viable. For now, it’s nothing more than a neat idea. An idea Microsoft can only hope will catch on.

Make no mistake, in a year from now, especially if you buy a new machine, you’ll be running Vista. Companies will force us to upgrade by not offering anymore updates for their previous versions running under XP. The same problem existed when XP first hit the streets. Support was weak, products were scarce, bugs were plentiful, and most everyone waited until Service Pack 1 until they even thought of upgrading. I’m sure the same is true here. When SP1 hits the street a lot more people should go with Vista, but not because it offers photographers anything they don’t have now, but because they’ll be forced to in order to run the latest apps.

I would place a link to the article, but it’s not available online yet. Grab the July 2007 issue if you’re really interested or just check on their site in another week or so.