Press Release         For immediate release

Contact Iraj Sodagar, Peter Schelkens (pr@jpeg.org)
July 15, 2011, Berlin, Germany

ISO/IEC 10918 (JPEG) Part 6 - Application to Printing Systems Advances to Draft International Standard (DIS)

The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a Working Group of ISO/IEC, the International Organisation for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission, (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1) and of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG16), responsible for the popular JPEG, JPEG 2000 and more recently, the JPSearch and JPEG XR families of imaging standards. The WG1 group meets nominally three times a year, in Europe, North America and Asia. The latest meeting was held on July 11-15, 2011 in Berlin, Germany hosted by DIN e.V. and the German National Body.

At this meeting, JPEG has advanced ISO/IEC 10918-6 Application to Printing Systems to Draft International Standard (DIS) status.  This new part to the original JPEG suite of standards addresses specific requirements of the printing industry to specify a set of features and application tools to aid in file based interchange of images encoded according to the JPEG image coding standard (Rec. ITU-T T.81 | ISO/IEC 10918-1) for printing. This new standard is expected to reach International Standard (IS) status in February 2012.

We are very pleased to announce that ISO/IEC 24800-2 JPSearch (Still Image Search) Part 2 - Registration, identification and management of schema and ontology has been published as an International Standard. This part of JPSearch standard provides a framework to support interoperability of heterogeneous metadata through core metadata, translation rules and registration authority, enabling usage scenarios such as social-tagging of images.

The ISO/IEC 24800-6 JPSearch Part 6 - Reference software is also promoted to Draft International Standard ballot status at this meeting. It includes working software to demonstrate the functionality of all four technical parts of JPSearch - Parts 2 to 5. All parties that are interested in using JPSearch technology are welcome to download and examine the reference software.

At this meeting, EPFL of Switzerland demonstrated the use of JPSearch in an advanced image management platform for online use and mobile devices, named Cheese (http://cheese.epfl.ch/). Cheese offers user exciting features like visual similarity based search, object based tagging and semiautomatic tag propagation, as well as all standard features such as image upload, tagging and keyword based search.  For improved interoperability between different image repositories and applications, the platform supports the export and import of image files with embedded metadata in JPSearch Part 4 compliant format. All  that are interested in image search are welcome to use this site which is offered for free use.

In the Advanced Image Coding and Evaluation Methodologies Project (ISO/IEC 29170 - AIC), the working group continues its efforts in defining comprehensive guidelines for the evaluation of image coding technologies in terms of quality, complexity and functionality. The committee is delighted to announce the production of a Proposed Draft Technical Report (PDTR), which includes recommendations and application dependent evaluation methodologies for the areas of medical, security and camera sensors imaging. JPEG also would like to emphasis its Call for Response (CfP) on requirements, coding technologies, use cases, evaluation procedures and test materials for three targeted applications: medical imaging, camera sensors imaging and security applications.

The operation of the JPSEC Registration Authority, which was temporally suspended from 11th March, 2011 due to system damage caused by the earthquake, was restored and it can now be accessed at its URL - www.jpsec-ra.jp. Interested parties can also contact mailto:rainfo@fms.co.jp, for questions and comments.

"ISO/IEC 10918-6 advancement to DIS status is another proof of JPEG's commitment to promptly and adequately address the imaging industry standard needs. JPEG recognizes the importance of the high quality and timely development of its standards and always seeks the active industry participation to achieve the above goals," said Dr. Daniel Lee, Convener of the JPEG committee.

The JPEG web site (http://www.jpeg.org) has sponsorship opportunities for all companies involved in developments around JPEG. The marketing departments of interested companies should contact the webmaster, Richard Clark (webmaster@jpeg.org) for this high-traffic site.

The next WG 1 Meeting (56th) on November 21-24, 2011 will be hosted by the Swiss National Body in Lausanne, Switzerland.

More information about JPEG and its work is available at www.jpeg.org or by contacting Iraj Sodagar and Peter Schelkens, the JPEG PR ad hoc group at pr@jpeg.org.