well, i can see .jp2 normally in Firefox. but yeah it loads like the quicktime plugin before you can see the image =)
Works fine on a Mac running OS X and Safari browser (KHTML)
Just an aside, but I think that probably the largest general use of Jpeg2000 files is in SecondLife. You can upload files to their server as either JPG or BMP and they get converted to JPG 2000.
The patent issue with respect to inclusion in FireFox, etc. is interesting as SecondLife recently open sourced their client software (which would include their JPEG 2000 renderer).
Its been great reading all your commentsā¦
But the best option is to start out with a image well shot, in raw format, then if you have the skills from there, you donāt have to worry about any of the above issues, cos you are a good photographer anyway.
There is absolutely no mystery. JPEG2000 ir patent-encumbered, and no ree(beer or speech) software can not implement it, because of financial and legal reasons.
Nice article. Like most who read and surf internet a lot will know Jpeg 2000 was hyped so much back then without it EVER really took off.
But looking at it now. Bandwidth are cheap. And will be cheaper by the time any browser support Jp2.
Since Jpeg is nearly a standard are there anyway to improve the quality of the compression without having to reinvent the standard?
And HD photo doesnāt even make sense to me at all. They say it is directed to photographer. But anyone who are serious about photography would use RAW or DNG. And if they want high quality lossy they use Jpeg. ( Again coming back to better image quality )
Abit like audio. AAC is suppose to be better then mp3 yet mp3 is still the dominant audio format being used.
thanks for reminding me about why I liked image processing class in uni so much 
whoever picked that pic from Playboy did a world of good in turning on students on to image proc.
What is also great about Jpeg2000, is that the picture is its own thumbnail, and that you can get a poorer quality pictures from the original one by just dropping excessive bytes of the tail. It also means that browsers can use original pictures as their thumbnails by just downloading some first several kb of the pictures (no need for separate *.th.jpg any more!) and that with slow connections youāll see the whole picture at once from the very start, and the picture will be getting better and better while more details are loaded.
Check this:
Original jpeg http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/Orig.jpg
99KB jpeg 2000
http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/99.jp2
First 50 KB of the above
http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/50.jp2
First 25 KB of the above
http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/25.jp2
First 12 KB of the above
http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/12.jp2
First 6 KB of the above
http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/06.jp2
First 3KB of the above
http://amd.streamload.com/d001120/Hosted/Jpeg2000/03.jp2
Iām sorry, amd.streamload.com cannot form the proper contents type headers, so youāll have to āSave Targer Asā¦ā for the links in my previous post.
How about PNG files. They have excellent LOSSLESS compression.
I USE JPEG2000!
It seems I am the only one.
I archive my photo film scans at 90% compression: a 100 MB scan is saved as 10 MB. The color quality and image definition is far better than a 10 MB Jpeg.
and the picture will be getting better and better while more details are loaded.
Iām not so sure progressive rendering is a good thing. I covered progressive rendering in a previous postā¦
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000468.html
ā¦ and one commenter pointed out a problem with this, via Philip Greenspun:
http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/images
āSome people like interlaced or āprogressiveā images, which load gradually. The theory behind these formats is that the user can at least look at a fuzzy full-size proxy for the image while all the bits are loading. In practice, the user is forced to look at a fuzzy full-size proxy for the image while all the bits are loading. Is it done? Well, it looks kind of fuzzy. Oh wait, the top of the image seems to be getting a little more detail. Maybe it is done now. It is still kind of fuzzy, though. Maybe the photographer wasnāt using a tripod. Oh wait, it seems to be clearing up nowā¦ā
Isnāt JPEG 2000 also royalty supported? If so, how is that different from HD Photo.
I used to work at the labs at Eastman Kodak and specifically was involved in studying JPEG and its performance and quality.
The single biggest reason that JPEG 2000 is better than JPEG at given data size is the quantizing coefficients of the standard itself have been improved. When JPEG originally went out as a standard, the quantizing matrix was not fully optimized to the frequency response of the human visual system. Kodakās optimized values for the coefficients went into the JPEG 2000 standard, and is a primary reason why JPEG 2000 is better. However, note that there is no reason why they canāt be used with the original JPEG standard. In other words, by simply changing 64 constants, JPEG image quality will immediately close more than half the quality gap with JPEG 2000, if not more.
In the end, I agree with steffenj. JPEG as it was is basically good enough, certainly with the improved Q matrix values for 95% of the applications anyway. For the other 5% that really care, they wonāt use JPEG anyway - they wonāt tolerate the losses at all and will only use a lossless scheme if anything at all.
Firefox can display jpeg 2000, when the quicktime plugin is intalled, which also explains why safari can open the files.
At high bitrates, I agree. But at low bitrates (eg the examples shown in my post), itās a HUGE improvement.
I agreeā¦ but itās still just easier for people to use the higher bitrates (where thereās little difference) and skip over JPEG 2000. Few designers these days worry about the 2-4KB extra. Iām oldschool, so I sweat that kind of stuff. But most people donāt, so I dont expect changes any time soon. Especially with the fear of patent troubles and what happened to GIF for a while there.
All I gotta say is āProps for using Josie Maranā (if that is who I think the lady in the pics is).
How about before introducing new formats they make color profiles work in Firefox first. My friend is always harping on about that.