In the first part of this series we looked at the historical departure from delivering color images that were accurate to providing the more vivid colors automatically through the modification of film dies to provide additional saturation. Until recently, there was no similar process with digital imaging, and no fully automatic way to provide the better images that consumers seemed to really want to receive. Two different, but amazingly similar technologies, Perfect Touch Processing from Kodak and Color Accentuation Technology from PRS Technology, were both introduced as means to achieve these ends. So how are they different and similar? What is Kodak Perfect Touch?

Accord ing to Scott Auer, while consumers almost always indicated that they were happy with their Kodak photo print results, they believed it was the best that they could get. When pressed further, they really felt that the foreground was too dark, details were muted, the colors were too flat, or there was red eye from the flash. But, they figured that they probably messed up in taking the picture, or they didn't use the camera properly, or perhaps they used the wrong film for the conditions. They never considered that processing could make a difference.

To address this problem automatically, Kodak spent well over a million dollars to develop new technology. Perfect Touch Processing is the result. Kodak states that there is no other fully automatic solution that produces similar results for digital printing of photographic images originating from negative film.