The continuing evolution of digital cameras and digital photography systems

Electronic photography became popular when it focused on getting images into PCs, rather than onto TV screens. As desktop computers became image enabled, the sales of digital cameras to both professionals and consumers have grown rapidly. In the past, the primary emphasis was on increasing pixel count. Now that cameras costing less than US $1,000 provide more than 2 million pixels, users are learning that high pixel count is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for photographic quality images. As a result, the focus is shifting to designing optics, sensors, and digital processing to produce cameras having higher ISO speed, lower noise, wider dynamic range, improved tone and color reproduction, and fewer artifacts. Digital image processing can provide product differentiation by both enhancing image quality and providing new features. As pixel count increases, image compression becomes more important. While most digital photography systems today use the current DCT-based JPEG compression, the new wavelet-based JPEG2000 compression standard offers many valuable features for future systems. To support a range of digital photography systems, JPEG2000 will support a range of color interchange spaces and a flexible metadata mechanism.