Press Release: New Digital Photo Editing and Image Processing Software Debuts at DEMOfall 2005


Palo Alto, Calif. and Huntington Beach, Calif. -- September 20, 2005 -- Light Crafts, Inc. today announced LightZone for Mac OS X Tiger. Unlike the pixel-paint model of many existing applications, LightZone allows photographers to edit and process their images in terms of light and objects instead of pixels. Designed specifically for photographers, the intuitive solution significantly reduces the time necessary to produce better photographs and optimizes the images for print or other media output.

LightZone for Mac OS X Tiger photo editing software was publicly previewed for the first time at DEMOfall 2005. The annual DEMO conference is one of the world's premier forums for new technology innovations and focuses on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace.
"Photographers want solutions that let them spend more time on photography and less time learning technology and painting with pixels," said Dean Tucker, CEO and president of Light Crafts. "LightZone takes advantage of the integrated color management features of Mac OS X Tiger and is designed to give serious photographers an advanced image processing solution developed from the bottom up for digital photography.”
“The power, stability and ease-of-use of Mac OS X has made it the operating system of choice for the majority of professional photographers worldwide,” said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “We’re delighted that LightZone has taken advantage of graphics processing innovations in Tiger to create an excellent image editing application.”
“LightZone’s photographer-friendly design and the quality of its editing and processing features will fundamentally improve the workflow of professional photographers,” said Chris Shipley, executive producer, DEMOfall 2005. “LightZone dramatically reduces the time to perfect digital photographs and delivers more predictable and precise results.
Significant Improvements in Processing, Output and Productivity
Key features in LightZone include:
StudioFinder™ An innovative image viewer and file browser, StudioZone lets photographers view, organize, print and publish their photographs using a true digital negative format. An integrated RAW converter provides a seamless digital workflow from camera media to LightZone.
ZoneFinder™ ZoneFinder analyzes an image, recognizes and segments the digital negative, then displays the shapes, light and color values in the same way photographers pre-visualize their photographs.
ZoneMapper™ ZoneMapper provides an easier way to control and adjust the light and tonal values of an image. ZoneMapper is the most powerful way for photographers to precisely remap tonal values for color correction, contrast correction and to set the optimal points for highlights and shadows.
RegionMapper™ Unlike the layer and mask tools used by pixel-painting software, RegionMapper is the easiest way to select areas and shapes in an image, intelligently and automatically blending the transformations in the selected regions with the rest of the image. Light Crafts Launches LightZone at DEMOfall 2005
Non-Destructive Editing LightZone treats the original image as a digital negative, so the original image file is always unchanged. Transformations made to the photograph are saved separately in such a way that tells the application how the edited image should be displayed or printed.
Linear color space Instead of a gamma-corrected color space, LightZone works in a linear color space, allowing more precise control and improved transformations and consistent color and predictable results on a display or on paper.

About Light Crafts, Inc.
Light Crafts, based in Palo Alto, develops digital photo processing software for professional and prosumer photographers. For more information, visit www.lightcrafts.com
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Light Crafts, LightZone, RegionMapper, StudioZone, ZoneFinder and ZoneMapper are trademarks of Light Crafts, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Company Contact
Dean Tucker
CEO and President
dean@lightcrafts.com
(650) 331-1989
Media Contact
Mike Jackman
Jackman Communications
mike@jackman.com
(415) 388-3216

Posted: Tue - September 20, 2005 at 07:44 PM          


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