Newsbits


Thursday September 17, 9:01 am Eastern Time

Company Press Release

SOURCE: 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.

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