When I first began studying the JPEG 2000 standard, I thought, "Oh, great. Another file format. Just what everyone needs." After all, I was still waiting for someone to get the PNG file format to work right. However, after spending the last few weeks pouring over the 300 page text JPEG has submitted to ISO, I can say that I feel a bit better about the validity and possibly even the necessity of this file format.
First, let me state that I'm proud of the people at JPEG for making the JPEG 2000 standard backwards-compatible with the current JPEG standard. Thus, when I'm creating web-pages, I won't have to worry about browsers only accepting one format, thus requiring me to carry both file types on my server and entering some annoying browser-checking algorithm in every web page.
Also, as much as my wavelets Professor may not like to hear this, I don't think the compression using wavelets is the most incredible aspect of this new standard. I believe the Region of Interest coding is the most important and most impressive feature of this standard. We have never before been able to specify just what part of our images we want saved from a death by lossy compression. In my opinion, this should be the most talked about and eagerly anticipated feature of the new standard. However, I know I'm in the minority with this since every publication and website I go to is simply crazy for wavelet-based compression.
By late next year, we should start seeing JPEG 2000 encoders and decoders in third-party software. Most notably, we should see this feature show up in Adobe Photoshop as an Adobe-supported function. Currently, you can get a JPEG2000 Photoshop plug-in manufactured by several different companies. When Adobe supports it, you know it's here to stay.