CompuServe Messages

Jack, >> Funny–I got the impression that Kodak's Photo CD was introduced so that Kodak could sell it as a service and make a lot of money. I doubt with their patents and copyrights that they would be too thrilled to see competing photo companies offering it without paying royalties. << The cost to an ISV to include Photo CD read and discplay capability in their software is $695 for the Kodak Photo CD Software Developer Toolkit. That is it. The ISV owns the application it created, and can sell it or give it away. No more money is involved. So when Adobe put Photo CD directly into the "File Open" menu, their payment to Kodak was $695 once and for all. Photo CD Software Developer Toolkits are available for Mac, Windows, DOS, and Sun UNIX. For other operating systems, we work with the developer to port the toolkit. This already has happened for Atari and Acorn, and will be happening for several other platforms. On Macs, QuickTime 1.5 reads Photo CD images directly. No other software is required to open the image. Our strategy is to get all other major operating systems to include direct access to Photo CD images at least as well as Apple did with QuickTime 1.5. When we introduce Photo CD Portfolio authoring software this summer, we will make an API available FOR FREE to ISVs who want to introduce Photo CD Portfolio scripting into their applications, letting them *output* to fully compatible Photo CD Portfolio discs (with full image packs, in all resolutions). Photo CD Portfolio authoring software includes a feature called "image packer" that lets the user convert TIFF files (later PICT and other files) to fully compatible Photo CD format. This means that any digital still image can be written to Photo CD, including digital cameras, output from image editing programs, and presentation or multimedia programs. This software will be available for Sun, Mac, and Windows initially. Regards … Paul