Customer Reviews

JPEG2000: Image Compression Fundamentals, Standards and Practice (The International Series in Engineering and Computer Science)

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This book is quite good but any potential buyer should know exactly why he would buy it and if it really matches his expectations. Indeed, this book is hardly a helper in implementing jpeg2000, but more a reference book for highly skilled image processing professionals/researchers. It is divided in two parts: the first part is about general image processing topics and provide some explanation about the choices made for jpeg2000. It is the "theorical" part. The second part is about jpeg2000 itself. The latter could have been much more practical and better directed to implementors. In fact, I was thinking of this book being able to clarify some aspects of the norm that are quite blur, but I find the way it is written, even for the second part, overly complicated and scientifically oriented, not "engineering" oriented. Most of the topics are better explained in the norm itself than in this book, even if the latter is much more detailed. Clearly there is room for another book on the topic but this time directed to implementors, with less theory, less scientific notations, are more, much more, real world examples working on real bit-streams.

This book is divided into four parts. The first part of the book is about every signal processing subject under the sun that touches the JPEG2000 standard - in 400 pages. This is too much if what you want to do is code/decode existing JPEG2000 files. It is not nearly enough if you don't understand these topics in the first place. At this point you finally see a chapter with JPEG2000 in the title. This is followed by 175 pages that basically "plug" the standard when, finally, on page 573 you get to the JPEG file format, or so the chapter title says. However, there isn't enough information to code and decode a JPEG2000 file.

This is not a book you'd want if you want to work with existing files, and it is not a book you'd want if you want to create JPEG2000 files. It is more about the underlying science of JPEG2000 at a very high level and is intended to sell you on the standard's value versus JPEG. The author even tells you this in the preface.

My advice is - if you have to do this professionally get your company to buy this overpriced tome as a sometimes reference and most-of-the-time doorstop. As for yourself, google "JPEG2000 Tutorial". There are a number of clear tutorials out there for the DSP-aware that want to know something about the technology behind J2K and why it is an improvement over JPEG. For the programming part, look for the javadocs on Java Advanced Imaging. It has a JPEG2000 decoder/encoder and once you know the basics of the technology, the parameters you feed the decoder/encoder will make more sense. All of this will cost you a grand total of nothing.

If one wants to learn jpeg2000, he can look for some papers and source codes which are better than this book.
If one wants to learn theory of image coding, he can read some other books much better than this book.

This book is only for fools.

The author of this book is a genius. His work should be required reading for all. Definatly one of the great minds in our time.