Digital imaging into the future

In a keynote address to attendees of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Perez reflected on the current state of the digital imaging industry and asserted that consumers want full ownership of and instant access to all their images and information in order to creatively tell their life stories.

Yet, Perez noted, the imaging industry continues to make this a difficult proposition by adding complexity through the proliferation of stand-alone devices and rapidly changing, proprietary technology standards that confuse consumers.

"Digital products and services should not require our customers to be engineers or professional photographers, but rather, should inspire them to be artists and publishers as they capture the moments of their lives, as they see them, with intuitive ease."

Since the days of company founder George Eastman, Kodak has focused on unleashing the power of images through innovation and by making complex technology simple to use: "Yet today's digital capture devices don't enable consumers to take full advantage of the powerful capabilities offered by digital technology.

"Today's digital cameras are dinosaurs, with the same basic architecture and functionality as the box Brownie camera that Kodak introduced more than one hundred years ago. It's a lens, shutter and something to capture the focused light. All the imaging industry has done is to replace silver with silicon.

"In the next era, we will design digital cameras from the ground up to take full advantage of the creative power that digital technology provides."

Perez says consumers want the power to use their images to connect, create, preserve, entertain and inform: "To that end, Kodak is committed to reinventing the digital imaging experience by pretty much changing everything that defines photography today and bringing ease-of-use to the next level."

Perez cited the following three Kodak technology platforms that are driving the company's innovation efforts:
Kodak Perfect Touch Technology, that will automatically detect and fix, before the user knows it, common photographic flaws such as under-lit pictures, high contrast scenes, back-lit shadows and red-eye in both still and motion images.
Kodak's e-finder technology, where all digital content is automatically given a unique identity, enabling users to instantly access any image or information they wish anytime, anywhere. This intelligent content technology would take metadata tagging to the next level by enabling organization of pictures based on GPS location, automatic scene classification (beach, birthday party, etc.), decade mapping, face recognition technology and more.

Kodak's e-moment technology, an intelligent system where pictures have the ability to automatically recognize each other. So, without human instruction, a picture will use its metadata to find another picture with related data, and assemble into new groups based on how they relate to one another.

"Consumers own the future of digital imaging - their pictures, their memories, their life's data, the stories they can tell about their life," says Perez. "But it's no longer about just pictures or voice, data or text. It's the future where information and imaging become one, and consumers can access the important images of their life anytime, anywhere."