Canon Photo, the Canon Photo Home Edition predecessor, ranked number one in PC Data’s "Personal Productivity: Photo Editing" category for January 2000. Additionally, Canon Photo has continued to rank as one of the top titles in this category every month this year.

The new Canon Photo products contain many new features including support for multiple image layers, extensive printing options and increased support for online photo communities. Canon Photo Advanced Edition contains all the elements of Canon Photo Home Edition and also includes three additional photo programs – Photo Montages, Photo Panoramas and Canon Video 1.0 – that are accessible from the main program interface.

The easy-to-use functionality of layers in Canon Photo Advanced Edition lets users work on separate image elements without affecting the whole picture. Layers allow users to apply effects to the main body of a photo without disturbing the frame, text or secondary objects and vice versa. When finished, a single flat-image can be created or the layers can be maintained for future editing. Layers give enthusiasts greater control and more flexibility in photo editing.

Customers can access photo community sharing sites within the new Canon Photo products. Fully integrated with the software, users can upload and download images directly to and from the Web through Zing.com and PhotoIsland.com. These communities provide their members with space for storing, sharing and archiving personal photos and images. They also offer photo-related services, activities and products.

Interface & Organization

Canon Photo Advanced Edition keeps the interface simple to give users the ability to quickly and easily access features. A full set of large icons for the most used features – copy, paste, multiple undo/redo, rotate, flip and resize – reside on the right side of the screen and remain stationary regardless of the activities being performed. By minimizing interface changes, Canon Photo Advanced Edition makes it easy for customers to navigate through the features of the software. Unlike some image-editing programs, Canon Photo Advanced Edition doesn’t force users into step-by-step activities that can restrict creativity or present roadblocks when only a quick retouch is required. Instead, all of Canon Photo Advanced Edition’s tools, projects, special effects and enhancements are intelligently located where users can reach them quickly. Canon Photo Advanced Edition retains the speed of its predecessor and still helps users retouch a photo, create a personalized project and print or post it to the Internet in minutes.

Canon Photo Advanced Edition offers powerful image management tools with the inclusion of the Album Manager feature. This feature lets people store, sort and search for photos. The Album Manager also has the ability to catalog every image on a user’s hard drive for easy reference and to make future searches quicker. Using the Album Manager, users can run a slide show of any album of images in full-screen, complete with auto-loops and transitions.

Editing & Ehancing Photos

Canon Photo Advanced Edition contains a complete set of powerful editing and retouching tools including airbrush, bucket fill, clone, paintbrush, eraser, smudge and red-eye removal. Global enhancements to a photo can be done as well including controls for brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpen and tone. A wide variety of special effects are also available including sketch, ripple, wrinkle, splash, mosaic, 3D grid, ribbon, magic mirror and emboss. All enhancements and effects can be fine-tuned with easy-to-use controls.

Creating & Printing Projects

A plethora of projects are included in Canon Photo Advanced Edition including calendars, greeting cards and frames. Canon Photo Advanced Edition also includes Photo Fantasies. Photo Fantasies is a complete program in itself to create personalized "fantasies" where a person’s face is placed in a pre-made background. By combining a snapshot with these backgrounds, anyone can become an astronaut, a rock star or a beauty queen. The program includes complete control for matching face colors to the background, tilting, zooming and changing contrast and brightness for the best match possible. Custom fantasies are also possible where the user can create a personalized background.

Canon Photo Advanced Edition contains extensive printing capabilities. Customers have several printing options including single images, multiple images on a single page or printing an entire album of thumbnail images. Many page configurations are available; customers can drag and drop photos from albums directly into print previews and within the preview itself. When preparing to print multiple images on a page, users may select different page configurations without needing to re-set the images onto the page. Canon Photo Advanced Edition automatically shift the photos from one page layout to the next. Canon Photo Advanced Edition includes support for Avery and Kodak templates as well.

Photo Panoramas

Available in Canon Photo Advanced Edition, Photo Panoramas is an easy-to-use photo-stitching program that seamlessly combines multiple photos into a single picture or QuickTime movie. Photo Panoramas provides multiple stitching modes so users can create horizontal, vertical, tiled and 360-degree panoramas. An auto-stitch feature makes intelligent choices of where to match photos and users can manually line up pictures as well.

Photo Montages

Photo Montages, included in Canon Photo Advanced Edition, lets users create a "montage" of any photo from a collection of micro-images. Photo Montages includes an image collection to create the montage or users can create their own collections. Photo Montages provides options to apply grids and borders, add captions or signatures or even include a "hidden treasure" in the final montage. Once created, the montage may be printed on a color printer or sent to a special Photo Montages printing service to be printed out as a high quality poster.

Canon Video 1.0

Canon Video 1.0 in Canon Photo Advanced Edition gives users the ability to animate, edit and create new videos using existing video clips, image files and text. A clean interface with intuitive storyboards and drag-and-drop simplicity makes Canon Video an easy way to create self-playing files to share through email or on the Web.

Canon Photo Home Edition

Canon Photo Home Edition offers many of the same power and features as Canon Photo Advanced Edition. Canon Photo Home Edition provides novice users with all the editing, printing and sharing tools as the Advanced version and includes the Photo Fantasies program. Canon Photo Home Edition uses the same clean, intuitive interface and allows access to most features from a single screen making navigation simple. Photo Panoramas, Photo Montages and Canon Video 1.0 are only available in Canon Photo Advanced Edition.

Pricing & Availability

Canon Photo Advanced Edition will be available in September 2000 through major retail chains, e-tail sites and from www.software.canon.com for $39.95* MSRP. Canon Photo Home Edition will also be available in September and will have an MSRP of $29.95*.

System Requirements

Minimum system requirements for running Canon Photo Advanced Edition and Home Edition include an IBM-compatible PC with a Pentium 166 MHz processor or faster, Windows 95, 98, 2000, Windows NT 4.0 or Windows Millenium Edition operating system; 32 MB of RAM (64 MB recommended); 300 MB of free hard disk space; and a display supporting 16 bit color or better.

For Macintosh users, the minimum system requirements for Canon Photo Advanced Edition and Home Edition include a Power Macintosh or Macintosh-compatible Power PC; Macintosh System 8.6 or higher; 64 MB of RAM; 300 MB of hard disk space; and a display supporting 16 bit color or better.

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. Customers can also talk with a customer care technician (8 a.m. – 10 p.m. Monday – Friday, ET). 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 $25 billion in worldwide sales in 1999.

# # #