The Windows Imaging Component supports discovery of new and proprietary (e.g., Raw) image formats. Any application that uses WIC can take advantage of new image formats as soon as their CODECs (encoder/decoders) are installed on the PC.

WIC includes updated CODECs for TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, & BMP that are much more secure than previously released CODECs for these formats, and alsosupports a new high-performance image format called Windows Media Photo.

Additionally, WIC provides metadata readers and writers for common image metadata formats, and enables applications to preserve their own metadata inside image files so they don't need to create "sidecar files".