Applied Science Fiction Inc, an Austin, Texas-based company that likes to style itself as an IBM spin-off, has some major OEM deals with scanner manufacturers in the works, one to be announced within the next two weeks. Austin, Texas-based Applied, which has patented image correction technology that can remove surface scratches and blemishes from photographs and film, has now seen its Digital Ice technology reach the market after four years of development, through Nikon Inc, the first of its OEMs to be revealed. Nikon products sell mainly to professional photographers and bureaux. Discussions are underway with other manufacturers, thought to include Eastman Kodak Co, Agfa SA and Fuji-Xerox. The company plans to make its money through royalties on scanner sales, and says just about half of all computers sold will have attached scanners by the year 2000. Applied Science was set up in 1995 by IBM engineer Al Edgar, a technologist and photographer, in conjunction with IBM manager Mark Urdahl. IBM provided no money, but did issue the company with the rights to patents relating to technology developed under its auspices. Applied Science likens its technology to the eponymous noise reduction technology of Dolby Laboratories. Nikon – and future licensees – will use the Digital Ice logo on products that support it. Scanners need to support a fourth scanning channel, after red, green and blue, that can detect material on the surface of the picture, such as fingerprints, scratches, dust and hair, and eliminate them from the final scan. Unlike post-processing software, such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft PictureIT, the techniques does not remove any data from the picture. Instead it just ignores surface material, so that the damage doesn’t end up on the scanned image in the first place. Scanners are very unforgiving company spokesperson May Browning told Computerwire. The process takes four or five seconds, unlike the pixel by pixel operations needed to touch up a photograph in Photoshop. Nikon worked for 18 months with Applied Science to build new products supporting Digital Ice, and other licensees have had to go through the same process. Browning believes that all scanner manufacturers will want to use the technology. It’s also an opportunity for computer-oriented companies, such as Hewlett-Packard Co, Minolta Corp and Seiko Epson Group to muscle in on the market. Of course if digital photography takes off in a big way, the market for Applied’s techniques will diminish, but the company predicts that traditional photography will happily co-exist with digital for a long time to come. Initially, Digital Ice works on transparent film only, but the flatbed scanning technology most useful for the consumer end of the market should be out within four months. Other opportunities include in-store photographic processing equipment and even movie restoration, which could be carried out within a few days rather than months. Applied has further technology, called Digital Roc, under development which aims to correct the chemical damage that afflicts old photographs and film. The big question is, will companies such as Kodak be able to resist acquiring the company in order to keep the techniques proprietary? Applied Science is currently exploring options to have its technology ratified as a standard.
