Epson Partners With Leading Camera Manufacturers to Introduce PRINT IMAGE MATCHING II

July 2002

Sydney, 10 July 2002 - Epson Australia, the leader in colour printing technology, today announced that it will deliver the revolutionary PRINT Image Matching II technology to the Australian market across the entire photo printer line in the coming months. These printers will also support Exif Print.

The original PRINT Image Matching technology enabled digital still cameras (DSC) and printers work together to produce photographs as close as possible to the image that the DSC captures, with little or no involvement from the user. PRINT Image Matching II extends the introduction of the original P.I.M specification released in August 2001 and adds additional features to the original standard to create even richer printouts of digital Images on Epson Photo printers.

Marketing Communications Director for Epson Australia Mike Pleasants said:

"Epson's P.I.M. technology brought simple colour photo printing into the home in 2001. With the introduction of P.I.M.II we extend the functionality without sacrificing the simplicity of the solution."

It adds additional depth to the brilliant product we designed with the original P.I.M. technology. Even more information can now be transferred from the DSC to the printer, so Epson photo prints are even closer to the original photographic image."

As with the introduction of P.I.M. in 2001, the major Digital Still Camera vendors have been quick to get behind Epson and support this introduction of PIM II. The Minolta DiMAGE 7i and DiMAGE F100 are already available in Australia and support P.I.M. II. Pentax will be releasing two new cameras in July 2002 which support P.I.M. II; the Pentax Optio 330RS & 430RS.

What is PRINT Image Matching II?

With PRINT Image Matching II technology, the digital camera manufacturer can set critical image specific parameters for printing, such as gamma level, colour space, contrast, sharpness, brightness, saturation, shadow point, highlight point, colour balance, noise reduction and custom scene to ensure optimum results for each digital camera model. The camera saves this ideal print information in each image data file. PRINT Image Matching-compatible printers then use this information when printing the image to ensure that they most accurately reproduce the image created by the camera.

Utilising a PRINT Image Matching II -enabled digital camera, the photographer simply points and shoots in automatic mode or selects an image type like portrait, landscape, macro, scenery, or sport and snaps a picture. The print commands for photos taken in macro mode may emphasize sharpness and clarity, for example, while those taken in portrait mode could highlight soft focusing and subtle flesh tones. Additionally, the gamma setting data will reflect the original brightness of the image, while the wider colour space setting of the digital camera will provide access to previously unavailable colour data resulting in truer colours overall. The digital still camera's imaging characteristics are automatically reflected in the printed image.

PRINT Image Matching II will deliver new levels of image consistency and produce unsurpassed photo quality.

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