Thursday September 17, 9:01 am Eastern TimeCompany Press ReleaseSOURCE:
Live Picture, Inc.Live Picture and Laboratoires Fujifilm France Debut New Consumer Services For Processing, Printing and Publishing Photos Online In-Store Fujifilm Media Print Center-Photo Fun Station and LivePix Album
Enable Anyone to Create Professional-Quality Prints with Personal Photos
COLOGNE, Germany, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Live Picture, Inc., a leader in
Internet imaging, and les Laboratoires Fujifilm France today unveiled two new
photo processing services that enable consumers to easily create
professional-quality projects with personal photos. As part of a long-term
strategic alliance, Live Picture and les Laboratoires Fujifilm France (LFF)
debuted a new in-store kiosk that incorporates the Fujifilm Media Print Center
for producing and printing high-quality photos, and the Photo Fun Station for
creating and printing personalized greetings and other creative projects. The
two companies also unveiled Fujifilm/Livepix(TM) Album, an exclusive new
service featuring Live Picture software for storing, organizing, publishing
and ordering photos at home.
At the Photokina conference in Cologne, Germany today, Live Picture and
LFF demonstrated a prototype of the new Fujifilm Media Print Center -- Photo
Fun Station, which is scheduled to be available in European Fujifilm retail
shops beginning in the first quarter of 1999. Ideal for customers who do not
own home computers, the Photo Fun Stations are designed to provide a
remarkably easy and fun way to incorporate personal photos in custom greeting
cards, calendars and print packages. The in-store kiosks also will let
consumers instantly retouch and reprint pictures from digital files on
high-quality photo paper, save them to disk, or upload and download them via
the Internet.
The two companies also announced Fujifilm/LivePix Album, an exclusive
Laboratoires Fujifilm France service that provides customers with their photos
on Flashpix-CD, along with easy-to-use software that organizes, manages and
publishes images online via Fujifilmnet. The Fujifilm/LivePix Album service
is scheduled for release by Christmas 1998 at Fujifilm retail centers
throughout Europe.
``These innovative services give millions of Fujifilm customers throughout
Europe the same tools that professionals use to bring their images to life
-- on photographic paper and on the Web,'' said Kate Mitchell, president and
CEO of Live Picture, Inc. ``Today's announcement represents the first
milestone in Live Picture's strategy to enable Photo Network Services that
make it easy and fun for consumers to do more with their pictures.''
``Les Laboratoires Fujifilm France chose Live Picture imaging technology
because of its expertise in digital imaging technology,'' said Claude Develay,
president and CEO of Laboratoires Fujifilm France. ``We have worked closely
with Live Picture to create exclusive, exciting and easy-to-use content that
will help our customers turn their pictures into something truly memorable.
With the new Fujifilm Media Print Center and the Fujifilm/LivePix Album,
Fujifilm retail centers will have everything our customers need to scan,
store, process, organize and publish their images.''
Fujifilm Media Print Center -- Photo Fun Station
At the new FujiFilm Media Print Center, customers can scan in their
favorite photos from prints, negatives or slides. They can also load them
from a Smart Media, PC-MCIA card, floppy disk, Zip disk or CD. A
touch-sensitive screen makes it easy and fun for consumers to use LivePix
software to retouch, enlarge and crop their photos. Customers can then use
the Media Print Center to print their best photos onto high-quality
photographic paper.
The Photo Fun Station also allows consumers to produce greeting cards,
stationery and other creative projects using their favorite pictures. With
Live Picture's Intelligent Templates(TM), Fujifilm customers are able to use a
regularly updated array of sophisticated, professionally designed cards,
calendars, posters, stationery and photo albums. The Fujifilm Media Print
Center allows them to print their work in the store, which trims the
traditional turn-around time for printing invitations or holiday greeting
cards from weeks to minutes. For larger orders, users can electronically send
their project print orders to any Fujifilm processing lab in Europe, which
will deliver them in a few days to the Fujifilm retail center of their choice.
Because the Fujifilm Media Print Centers are connected to the World Wide Web,
consumers can also create special photo greetings and projects and send them
to another Fujifilm Media Print Center for printing anywhere in the world.
Fujifilm retail centers will provide assistance as needed to all customers
using the Fujifilm Media Print Center -- Photo Fun Station.
Fujifilm/LivePix Album
The Fujifilm/LivePix Album service enables customers to drop off their
Fujifilm at Fujifilm retail shops, and receive a Flashpix-CD of their photos
along with software that helps them visually organize all graphic, audio,
video and slide show files. Designed for home PC users, Fujifilm/LivePix
Album features a unique slide show and album storage system, so consumers have
fast and easy access to Fujifilm/LivePix Album features.
Photos Online with Fujifilmnet.com
Customers also can post their pictures on the Fujifilmnet Web site.
Available through Fujifilm retail shops separately or in addition to the
Fujifilm/LivePix Album, this service assigns customers a special account
number and password so they can access their images from any Fujifilm Media
Print Center - Photo Fun Station or Web-connected PC. Once connected,
Fujifilmnet members can order high-quality reprints and photo gifts (including
mugs and T-shirts), or send them as email. Fujifilm/LivePix Album software is
optimized to work with the Fujifilmnet Web site.
LivePix software was the first consumer application to incorporate the
Flashpix file format. It is also based on a proprietary technology called
FITS (Flexible Image Transformation System). These core technologies enable
the Photo Fun Station to work quickly with large, high-resolution image files
and to manipulate images -- up to 50 times faster than competing consumer
photo editing applications. The end result is greater quality, speed and
flexibility when working with digital images.
About Laboratoires Fujifilm France
Laboratoires Fujifilm France is a subsidiary of Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.
of Tokyo, a leading manufacturer of imaging and information products, with
13 labs and 23 million rolls of film processed per year. Les Laboratoires
Fujifilm France is France's leading film processor. Fujifilmnet is an online
photo service from les Laboratoires Fujifilm France at
http://www.fujifilmnet.com.
About Live Picture, Inc.
Live Picture, Inc. is a leader in network imaging and is the inventor of
zoomable images for the Internet. Live Picture develops and sells servers,
tools and viewers based on its Zoom image technology for creating, managing,
and using highly detailed images for network and print applications. Leaders
in the retail, entertainment, travel, real estate and publishing industries
are among Live Picture's customers. Live Picture, Inc. is headquartered in
Campbell, Calif., with offices in San Francisco, Israel, France, Germany, UK,
and Japan. Live Picture is on the Web at http://www.livepicture.com.
NOTE: Live Picture, LivePix, the Live Picture logo, the Zoom logo, ``Zoom
in for a closer look'' and Zoom are either trademarks or registered trademarks
of Live Picture, Inc. Other brands and products are trademarks of their
respective
owners.
Newsbit furnished by:
A: NetShift Software Ltd.
A: Hughenden Yard, Marlborough, Wilts,SN8 1LT, UK
T: +44 (0)1672 511 094
F: +44 (0)1672 511 078
E: [email protected]
E: [email protected]
W: www.netshift.com
Thanks Tim and Anna!
|