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Imaging leaders partner for direct printing standard
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(Monday, December 9, 2002 - 18:00 EST)

A press release from Canon Inc., Fuji Photo Film Company Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Co., Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., Seiko Epson Corp. and Sony Corp. announces that the companies have partnered to propose an industry standard for direct printing from digital still cameras.

The new specification has been tentatively named 'DPS', and was initially developed by Canon, HP, Epson and Sony. Fuji and Olympus joined discussions later, and the six companies finalized a proposal for printing via USB and PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol). The DPS 1.0 standard has yet to be fomally published, but will apparently provide for any DPS-compliant camera and printer to be connected, and images singly or multiply using DPOF or the camera screen. There is also a provision for index prints, multiple copies of prints, cropping, variable print sizes and adding the date on each print.

More details are in the press release and on the DPS website. A white paper on DPS and a preliminary v0.9 DPS specification are available, and comments are being solicited through February 1st, 2003.

Source: Yahoo! Finance / BusinessWire

Original Source Press Release:

Leaders in Digital Imaging Market Propose New Industry Standard for Direct Printing from Digital Still Cameras

PALO ALTO, Calif. & TOKYO -- Dec. 2, 2002 -- Canon, Inc., Fuji Photo Film Company, Ltd., HP, Olympus Optical Company, Ltd., Seiko Epson Corporation and Sony Corporation today announced a proposal for an industry standard that enables consumers to easily print photos by directly connecting their digital still cameras to their printers -- no PC required.

Until now, each company had its own proprietary solution for direct printing -- without a computer -- between their own branded digital still cameras and printers. This situation has proven to be limiting to consumers, as they are unable to achieve the same convenience and ease of use when using a combination of products of different brands. The unified specification, tentatively named "DPS," ensures compatibility across digital cameras and printers, regardless of brand, giving consumers the flexibility and simplicity to create high-quality photos.

The specification was originally developed by Canon, HP, Seiko Epson and Sony. Fuji and Olympus later joined discussions and collectively the specification was finalized. Together, these six companies, all leaders in digital imaging, will continue to advocate industry adoption of this new standard, which is expected to spur the growth of digital photography.

About DPS

DPS specifies an application layer control protocol and is independent from any physical transport. It was designed to be extensible for implementation on future physical interfaces. The DPS version 1.0 document, which will be published formally later, is written for USB as a physical transport and Picture Transfer Protocol(1) as data transfer protocol. Consumers can simply connect a DPS-enabled digital still camera to a DPS-enabled printer, using the camera to perform operations and easily print high-quality photos.

The following features are supported by a DPS system according to the recommended specifications:

  • Print an image displayed on the digital still camera
  • Print two or more images selected from the display on the digital still camera
  • Automatically print images using the Digital Print Order Format(2) specification
  • Print an index of all images
  • Print all images
The following features are available using the print setup option:
  • Print part of the image by specifying clip area
  • Print multiple copies of a single image
  • Print with date
  • Specify exact size of a print
The following printer status information is displayed on digital still camera:
  • Establishment of DPS connection
  • Printer Error
  • Printing progress
  • End of print
  • Cable can be safely disconnected
More information on DPS is available at http://www.camera-direct.info/.
  • (1) Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) was developed by the International Imaging Industry Association, an industry standard body, as a standard for image file transfer. With this protocol, image files can be transferred between a digital still camera and PC via USB.
  • (2) Digital Print Order Format (DPOF) is a standard format control file that is stored in the digital still camera's removable memory card, which specifies which image files should be printed, and the number of copies.

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