News- 1/30/00

More Comdex & MacWorld Highlights

OUTPUT

Print your own Photographs with Sony's DPP-SV55 - a 403 dpi dye-sub print which prints both 4x6 and 3.5x4. This $349 printer can print directly from Memory Stick or PC card media. Its controls lets you adjust orientation, brightness, sharpness and color.

Or protect your images with Watermarks, maybe? H-P's new 1220c inkjet printer can print two sided, duplex , sepia toned and the watermark technology which Adobe developed with Digimark. Of course when I asked either Adobe or HP - ³Do you mean if I have a plain old printer, it won't print the watermark?², neither had a satisfactory answer. Wouldn't you want a watermark which all printers printed and a printer which could be coded to not print it?

INPUT

Huge images from Kodak's top of the line DCS 660 - 12 bit color 6 megapixel CCD

While Nikon also ups the ante with its desktop scanners. They start with the Coolscan IV with a 3.6 dynamic range, 2900 dpi resolution at $895, and the Super Coolscan 4000 with a 4.2 dynamic range 4000 dpi $1,695 both 35 mm film scanners and now have the Super Coolscan 8000 a multi-format film scanner including glass slide at 4000 dpi at $3000.

MANAGEMENT

For all of you to whom I have told to go to Web Technology if you want enterprise wide access to your images, I may have to eat my words. When Media Bin's showed me what their program now do, they got my serious attention.

• Batch processing at use- Original high resolution converted on the fly to Web jpeg, 150 dpi tif or whatever your user might need.
• Batch processing at data entry - you select the views ( size) and it automatically creates those thumbnails.
• Batch processing for color space.
• Good image matching - find similar images.

For those of you using ACDSee, they have recently come out with FotoCanvas an image editing software which at $40 is pretty inexpensive. Besides the usual rotation, red eye and sharpening, it can add captions blend colors and has several special effects.

Found in the Alleys:

Hard to figure how to tell this story. English visual arts firm sets up in Detroit? Or want to make Lithographs from your archives? A company called TimeFramed out of Oxford , GB, is marketing limited editions of exclusive material to which they have obtained licensing agreements. They create collages around an idea, for example: to celebrate their location they have developed collages with documents, photographs, old advertising around the Model T.

They market these collages as a wall hanging,box sets or portfolios. Anyone need a unique present or have an archive to license?????

While you are looking for images to present, try out Random-Eye. It's a portal search for over 20 stock houses, which is fast and simple.

Great new Digital Camera Buying guide to be found at Image Resources' new Camera Finder. This database of digital camera information is incredibly complete including their own tests results.

And last but not least -

Did you hear about the Guggenheim and the Hermitage going to Las Vegas? Yep, they are doing a show at the new Venetian Hotel together. Now the Kunsthistorische Museum of Vienna has made it a triumvirate. The three museums have decided to team up to coordinate exhibits.

Everyone is going global.