Eastman Kodak Company
Kodak Introduces New Macintosh Version of the Award-Winning Digital GEM Plug-in
Free trial version Digital GEM plug-in, Macintosh version, for noise/grain reduction is now available at www.asf.com
ROCHESTER, NY, July 14 -- Eastman Kodak Company today introduced the Mac version of the Digital GEM plug-in for automatic noise and grain reduction.
The Digital GEM plug-in is the newest addition to the software suite of image correction and enhancement plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop and compatible image editing applications, which includes the Digital ROC plug-in for color correction/restoration and the Digital SHO plug-in for revealing hidden details in shadows or dark image areas. These award-winning software products were developed and launched by Applied Science Fiction of Austin, Texas, which Kodak recently acquired. Applied Science Fiction is a leader in automatic image correction and photo restoration applications.
Image noise can be caused by a variety of factors including, high-speed film grain, adverse lighting conditions, scanner/digital camera CCD noise, or image enlargement. The Digital GEM plug-in allows users to automatically isolate and manage noise/grain in both highlight and shadow areas without sacrificing image detail. Users can also achieve portrait studio quality, soft-focus effects, as well as image sharpening, which surpass most standard "unsharp mask" processes. Additionally, Digital GEM plug-in reduces or removes JPEG image artifacts, as well as line screen patterns from flatbed scans. For users who prefer to override the automation, the Digital GEM plug-in features three separate sliders that provide manual control over shadow and highlight areas, plus the overall image clarity. Some of the improvements, compared to the original Windows version 1.0 include, dramatically better memory handling and increased speed. These improvements will also be incorporated in the new Windows update, version 1.1. Update your current Windows version for no charge at www.asf.com.
"The Digital GEM plug-in offers the Mac computer user another tool to automatically correct and enhance their digital images in seconds, and the flexibility to make targeted adjustments manually." said Dan Sullivan, Site General Manager, Kodak's Austin Development Center. "Regardless of the image source, whether from scanners, digital cameras, the Internet, or picture CDs, our advanced suite of software plug-ins offers convenience and versatility for sophisticated users to efficiently improve their images. These plug-ins are affordable tools for correcting and perfecting the many images that people are capturing, using, and archiving."
The FREE trial version is available for download at www.asf.com . This fully functional trial version applies digital watermarks to images. To disable the watermark, users may purchase a software key via a secure, e-commerce site for $79.95. Plug-in product CD-ROMs are also available for purchase at www.asf.com. Special discounts apply to combination purchases of the plug-in suite of products. See www.asf.com for details.
Eastman Kodak Company and infoimaging
Kodak is the leader in helping people take, share, print and view images for memories, for information, for entertainment. The company is a major participant in infoimaging, a $385 billion industry composed of devices (digital cameras and flat-panel displays), infrastructure (online networks and delivery systems for images) and services & media (software, film and paper enabling people to access, analyze and print images). With sales of $12.8 billion in 2002, the company comprises several businesses: Photography, providing consumers, professionals and cinematographers with digital and traditional products and services; Health, supplying the healthcare industry with traditional and digital image capture and output products and services; Commercial Imaging, offering image capture, output and storage products and services to businesses and government; Components, delivering optics and imaging sensors to original equipment manufacturers; and Display, which designs and manufactures state-of-the-art organic light-emitting diode displays as well as other specialty materials.