February 19, 2002 – San Bruno, CA – RealTimeImage, the world's leading online proofing technology provider, today announced that its 2003 plans will significantly and positively affect distribution, development, and expansion. Graphic arts division executive vice president Yehuda Messinger says the company is making changes in response to successful company-wide results in 2002, as well as overall growth in the online proofing segment. "The online proofing category has moved beyond the early adopter phase faster than we all thought it might," says Messinger, who attributes increased adoption rates to a number of factors, including decisions by companies like Kodak Polychrome Graphics to integrate RealTimeImage's technology into their virtual proofing and approval management products. "Many of the largest through smallest companies in the commercial print, packaging, prepress, agency and corporate markets are now realizing substantial cost reductions due to RealTimeProof, and are telling us that online proofing has become a requirement in today's economy." To address the growing online proofing user community, RealTimeImage last week launched an official RealTimeProof User Forum. The forum, to be initially moderated by Steve Carter of Southern Graphic Systems (SGS) and Roland Greene of IPC Mail-Well, will be a user venue for open discussion on online proofing applications and related topics. RealTimeImage will also encourage customers to provide feedback and suggestions that will help the RealTimeProof customer community maximize the advantages of their RealTimeProof solutions. RealTimeImage users can participate in this forum immediately by sending a request to [email protected]. To better accommodate distribution needs in North America and Europe, RealTimeImage will soon disclose a revised distribution infrastructure. Messinger says the company will rely on the reseller channel to a greater degree in North America, now that online proofing is increasingly adopted and demanded. The company will retain direct sales management staff to work with, and manage, the channel. The company also added additional European sales managers in Benelux and France, with appointments to be announced in upcoming weeks. The company began the year with product enhancements to RealTimeProof solutions. Among the 60 new enhancements supported in the latest update of the RealTimeProof products and service (ASP) are: -New Gallery View for enhanced viewing of project files -Enhanced file support for pre-separated single-file PDF and PS native files -Support for High level assign file from a Brisque workflow -UTF 8 (Unicode) support by RealTimeProof client, allowing multi-lingual -use of the annotations -P3 and Client support for Netscape 6 and 7 -Support for ISA proxy Authentication -New Loose Grease pen tool – RealTimeImage has added one of the most popular, traditional tools to the desktop. The grease pen is a great tool particularly when the user wants to mark up several areas of a proof under one annotation. *New Language Versions* In response to customer demand, the company is developing localized versions of its client/server product. A French version of RealTimeProof Classic is available beginning now, with German, Italian and Spanish language versions of the company's client/server application also planned for the first quarter of this year. Localized versions of the ASP are also planned for release throughout this year. In addition to product enhancements, in 2003 RealTimeImage is introducing new flexible pricing programs that include both monthly subscriptions and CapEx prices for both ASP and client-server products. "We're aggressively pricing our solutions so that users can find the right application and price to get started with online proofing. Plus our pricing gives our customers room to grow as we've experienced that after taking the initial leap many companies have found that ROI is very quick and the demand grows rapidly by end-users," says Messinger. "We've eliminated price as a barrier to implementation of our solutions."