| For Immediate Release |
|
Turning Digital Images into Print Photos a Must, Says Industry Vet |
|
Key to Archiving, Accessing, and Sharing Cherished Pictures and Memories |
|
Orlando, FL - PMA 2006 International Convention and Trade Show, Feb. 26, 2006
- As consumers rapidly shift from film cameras to digital, one of the biggest challenges facing the
industry is making it as easy to get a print from a digital camera as it is from a film camera. Today
it remains that the primary way people share and enjoy photographs is through prints, albums and scrapbooks.
"With film cameras, consumers are used to shooting a roll, dropping it off at the 24-hour pick-up, and saying, 'I'll take one or two prints." It was drop-dead simple to make prints that you could instantly share, archive or organize in a scrapbook or album to look at later," says Doug Rowan, CEO of ZoomAlbum, Inc, and known throughout the industry as a pioneer and leading driver of digital imaging and content management through stints as CEO at Corbis (www.corbis.com), Image Solutions Corporation, Impli, Inc., and AXS Optical Technology Resources. The great thing about digital cameras is you can take many more pictures than with a film camera. Unfortunately, once you get to 500-1,000 images, it gets pretty hard to organize, catalog, and create a "digital shoebox" to easily and quickly find the pictures you want. Worse than that, squeezing around the PC, while mom scrolls around rows of images gets pretty tiresome awfully quickly after just a few minutes. If you could create a "digital shoe box" you would still face two major problems:
Relying on CDs or DVDs as the best storage option for the digital shoebox is risky. Digital, while a superb storage media, also lays a trap: many consumers believe that digital images will last and stay unchanged forever. This is false. For the safety and protection of their images, consumers should assume that every hard disk will fail; and that almost all CD-ROMS have a life of less than ten years. Continues Rowan, "If you want a picture to be around for future generations: you must be able to print it, and print it on archival paper so you can scrapbook it, because with scrapbooking you can tell a story and not just have a collection of photos." One way to solve this problem is to provide consumers with an easy way to scrapbook their digital images in a printed photo format that:
Rowan also offers this piece of advice: "When making the print decision, consumers must take care to choose carefully and select the right printer, printer paper and the ink to ensure long-life. Use photo albums to tell a story, as opposed to creating ones that just have photos matted down; and try to add text, so that the person in the photo is "talking" and the album itself tells a story." About ZoomAlbum, Inc. ZoomAlbums™ (www.zoomalbum.com) are an exciting and patented new way to turn digital images into handmade, professional-looking albums of twelve glossy photos. These high-quality little albums fit right into the palm of your hand. All you need is a PC, Inkjet color printer, and ZoomAlbum supplies everything else (software, photo sheets, album covers) to create these charming and lasting keepsakes. You can even print your own personalized covers. ZoomAlbum photo sheets come with easy-to-follow instructions on the back of each sheet that walk you through a folding routine that produces, with the help of forgiving adhesive backing, a five-page booklet with images comprising both sides of each page and one on each inside cover. The software is simple and you can insert text captions, rotate, flip and crop photos. The hardest part is deciding on the 12 images. CONTACT: Ellen Marden ellen@zoomalbum.com www.zoomalbum.com 425.503.5458 |