Canon Photo and OfficeReady Give Mac Users More Software Choices

COSTA MESA, Calif., (January 4, 2000) -- Canon Software Publishing (CSP), a division of Canon Computer Systems, Inc., a subsidiary of Canon, Inc., today announced its plans to provide software programs compatible with the Macintosh operating system. The first available programs will be Canon Photo and Canon Photo Gold this month, followed by OfficeReady and OfficeReady Professional later in the year.

Canon Photo Gold and Canon Photo offer simple, yet fast and powerful, photo manipulation to new, occasional and enthusiastic users of digital cameras, scanners and digital photographs. The Canon Photo family of products gives users the power to digitally enhance and retouch photographs, share them with friends and family, explore special effects and create printable photo projects - all with speed and quality.

Designed for small office/home office (SOHO) businesspeople, OfficeReady software saves users time and produces professional-looking documents in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. For virtually every user's need, OfficeReady supplies a ready-to-use template. With pre-matched color schemes and fonts, OfficeReady takes the hassle out of designing elaborate Office documents.

"Macintosh customers will now have more software options, and the choices will be more affordable as well," said Christopher Dorn, executive director and general manager of CSP. "Only a handful of companies offer photo-editing programs for Macintosh, and fewer still are helping Mac users maximize Microsoft Office."

Canon Photo Family
As a leader in the photography world for over 50 years, Canon brings its imaging expertise to the Macintosh software arena with Canon Photo and Canon Photo Gold. Canon Photo executes common tasks quickly to make digital photography faster and more enjoyable. The software provides a simple interface for users to work on their digital photographs. The large workspace presents all the feature options in a "remote control" styled box located in the upper right-hand corner of the computer screen. From this control box users Get, Enhance and Share their digital pictures.

Acquiring and organizing digital photos is quick and simple with Canon Photo using the Get menu. The software is able to open and catalog pictures directly from a digital camera, scanner, hard drive, removable drive or Internet site. Users may conduct searches by title, date or keyword to make image management easier.

Enhancement features in Canon Photo include a one-button Quick Fix which automatically analyzes and adjusts the highlight and shadow ratio in an image resulting in a cleaner, brighter image. The Smart Pix feature adjusts for conditions present when the photograph was taken. Conditions are described in plain English and include settings for photos taken "indoors," "outdoors," "with a flash," "under fluorescent lights," on a "cloudy" or "sunny" day and the intensity of "shadows."

A Fix-by-Example feature is available to correct for brightness, intensity, color tint and sharpness. To simplify the adjustment of these attributes, Canon Photo presents the user with nine examples of their photo showing various degrees of corrections. The user clicks on the photo that, in their opinion, looks best. This process eliminates the "guess-timate" work required by many photo-editing programs. Canon Photo also has a wide range of special effects including squish, stretch, zigzag, oil paint, water color, emboss and more.

Manual tools are present for the more advanced users. These tools include lasso, shape and magic wand selection tools, a cropping tool, paint and air brushes, color fills, smudging, cloning, red-eye and dust removal, text tools and drawing tools. The sensitivity and intensity of these tools can be tailored as well.

Canon Photo has many options for printing and sharing digital photos. Many print sizes are available including wallet, 3x5, 4x6, 5x7 and full page. Multiple photos can be printed on a single page as well. Canon Photo users can create Photo Pages by dragging and dropping a photo into over 200 templates. Template styles are available for awards, calendars, holidays and more.

By using NetCard, users can send multimedia digital postcards via e-mail^*. The two-sided postcard contains a picture or video on one side and a button-click flips the picture to reveal a personalized message from the sender. Music clips can be attached to play as the card opens or the sender can record a voice message to play. The recipient will be able to view the postcard exactly as the sender meant it to be seen without using any special viewer software.

Spin Panorama, available in Canon Photo Gold, can be used for anything from showing vacation photos to giving potential home buyers a virtual tour. Canon Photo Gold creates panoramic images in an easy four-step process. The Smart Stitch feature will intelligently match the overlap points on photos to save users time when creating panoramas. Canon Photo Gold's panoramic photos can be viewed as a static image or as a QuickTime VR or Microsoft AVI movie where the viewer scrolls the photo to view the full 360-degree panorama. Canon Photo Gold also creates three-dimensional views of any item with Spin PhotoObjects technology. PhotoObjects are useful additions to Web sites wanting to display merchandise in 3-D detail, or PhotoObjects can be used to keep a record of precious antiques in the home. Spin PhotoObjects in Canon Photo Gold inverts the panorama process and merges multiple views of an object in a 3-D PhotoObject. Viewers of the completed PhotoObject can rotate it to view different angles of the item.

OfficeReady Family
OfficeReady Professional boasts over 1000 templates for Word, Excel and PowerPoint allowing SOHO users to increase work productivity and enhance work presentation. OfficeReady Professional loads with the selected Office Application (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) and is accessible through an easy-to-use on-screen toolbar which makes many complex functions in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, such as page borders, watermarks and Word Art, easier to use.

Because of the coordinated schemes, the production of matching reports, marketing materials and spreadsheets is simple. Categories of templates include company identity, business forms, marketing materials, reports, awards and certificates, correspondence and job search materials.

Finding the appropriate template is easy with OfficeReady's Template Browser. A user looking for an expense report form, for example, can perform a keyword search in the browser and be immediately presented with the appropriate template options. Users do not need to know they want an Excel template; the Template Browser searches the entire selection of templates from one window.

OfficeReady has also added a toolbar in PowerPoint that includes a Slide Master Wizard. The Slide Master Wizard is a simple way to add common elements to PowerPoint documents including logos, dates, page numbers and even watermarks. OfficeReady has added matched PowerPoint templates for on-screen and printed presentations; users choose a template designed for on-screen viewing and, when ready to print handouts, click one button to change to the print version of the same design which is toned down and optimized for printing.

OfficeReady Professional specifically attacks the roadblocks to using digital photos in Word documents. The Professional version also includes over 200 special Word templates containing Photo Sockets, placeholders for digital images, to make artwork easier to use in the word processing program. With the Photo Editor in OfficeReady Professional, users can adjust the brightness, contrast, color intensity and sharpness of a digital image as well as crop, stretch and rotate images.

Additional Canon Products for the Macintosh
In addition to Canon's software offerings for the Macintosh user, Canon Computer Systems Inc. (CCSI) also showcased its strong commitment to the Apple market today by announcing a full line of four new peripheral products designed to meet the specific needs of Mac users. Canon is the first manufacturer to offer all peripherals for Mac users: Bubble Jet printers, color portable printers, color scanners and multifunction printers for the Macintosh platform, all with an emphasis on performance, style and ease-of-use. Introductions included the BJC-85 Color Bubble Jet portable printer (first portable printer for iBook and PowerBook users), the CanoScan 630Ui color scanner (with optional colored lids to match the iMac colors), the BJC-3000 Color Bubble Jet printer and the MultiPASS C545 multifunction printer. CCSI also introduced two new print media, Magnet sheets and True Artist Canvas, for added creativity in print projects.

Pricing & Availability
Canon Photo Gold and Canon Photo will be available in January 2000 through electronic software delivery (ESD) at www.software.canon.com and other selected e-retailers for an estimated price of $54.95^** and $34.95^** respectively. The Mac-PC hybrid CD-ROM will ship to retail outlets in March 2000 at the same estimated price. Hybrid versions of OfficeReady Professional and OfficeReady 2.0 will ship to retail in the second half of the year with an estimated price of $69.95^** and $39.95^** respectively.

System Requirements
Minimum system requirements for running Canon Photo and Canon Photo Gold include a Power Macintosh or Macintosh-compatible Power PC; Macintosh System 7.5 or higher (OS8, 8.5 or 9 recommended); 32 MB of RAM; 30 MB of hard disk space for installation and a minimum of 50 MB hard disk space free at runtime; a CD-ROM drive; and a video card that can display thousands of colors (millions recommended). Canon Photo and Canon Photo Gold work with most Mac-compatible inkjet and laser printers and TWAIN-compliant scanner and digital cameras.

Minimum system requirements for running OfficeReady 2.0 or OfficeReady Professional include Microsoft Office 98 for the Macintosh; a Power Macintosh or Macintosh-compatible Power PC (120 MHz or faster); Macintosh System 7.5 or higher; 32 MB of RAM recommended; 15 MB of hard disk space minimum (50 MB recommended); a CD-ROM drive; and a monitor or display supporting 16 grays or 256 colors with 640 x 480 or higher resolution. OfficeReady 2.0 and OfficeReady Professional work with most Mac-compatible inkjet and laser printers and TWAIN-compliant scanner and digital cameras.

Customer Service and Customer Technical Support
Canon Software Publishing offers a full range of customer technical support options^***: e-mail and Web Site (FAQ's) via the CSP Web site at www.software.canon.com. For 24 hour, 7 day-a-week technical support, a customer can call (757) 413-2855 for fax-back support or to talk with a customer care technician (8 a.m. - 10 p.m. Monday - Friday, EST). Regular customer support is free for the first 30 days. After 30 days, paid support is available.

About Canon Software Publishing
Canon Software Publishing (CSP) is a division of Canon Computer Systems Inc., which is a subsidiary of both Canon U.S.A. Inc. (Lake Success, NY) and Canon Inc. (Tokyo, Japan). The division, headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., was founded in 1998 to develop, publish and distribute computer software primarily in North and South America. CSP publishes titles from both independent third-party developers and associated Canon companies. Canon is recognized as the world's leading imaging technology company, a leader in printer technology and a top worldwide patent holder. As a global technology leader, Canon achieved $24 billion in worldwide sales in 1998.

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