JPEG 2000, the new ISO / ITU-T standard for still image coding, is about to be finished. Another standard has been popular in recent years, namely JPEG. This paper compares the set of features offered by JPEG 2000, and how well they are fulfilled, versus JPEG. The study concentrates on functionality set, while addressing other aspects such as Region of Interest coding (ROI), superior low bit rate performance, memory requirements. Also, compressed image quality is evaluated using various algorithms. The principles behind each algorithm are briefly described. The results show that the JPEG 2000 supports a wide set of features that JPEG can either not address efficiently or not address at all.