CHICAGO, IL, September 6, 2001 – Imacon, the inventors of the award winning Flextight scanner, announced today at Print 01 in Chicago the release of a new scanner designed to address the needs of the prepress market. The Progression III can scan up to A3 reflective, negatives and transparency film from 35mm to 12cm x 17cm. "We have invested a great deal of time and resources in developing the new Progression III. As a result, we have made some significant improvements in its operation, speed and quality," said founder and joint managing director, Christian Poulsen. "We are very confident that the Progression III is robust enough to compete with the best scanners currently out in the market." The Progression III is suited for the prepress market due to its ability to scan up to A3 reflective (11_ in x 16_ in), negatives and transparency film from 35mm to 12cm x 17cm. The competitive pricing and quality of the Progression III makes it is a cost-effective method of scanning, allowing businesses to reduce overhead without sacrificing quality. "We have had tremendous international success with our Flextight scanners, selling more than 5000 over the past five years. With the launch of the Progression III, we can now focus on making a stronger market presence in the prepress and graphic arts industries," said Poulsen. The Progression III builds on the unique design of its predecessor, the Progression I, which was the first glass-free, 2-in-1, A3 flatbed scanner in the world consisting of a virtual drum and an electrostatic A3+ flatbed scanner. The Progression III uses this electrostatic system to hold reflectives in place throughout the scanning process, removing the risk of Newton rings, loss of sharpness and light distortion commonly associated with traditional flatbed scanners. The Progression III scanner also scans negative and transparency film using the patented magnetic Imacon Flextight holder and virtual drum, which provides perfect focus with a glass-free optical path. With a maximum file size of up to 1.2GB, the Progression III also has a CCD (3x8,000) optic sensor and optical resolution for 960 dpi to 6,300 dpi with in interpolation. Scan modes include color 24, 32 and 48 bit CMYK, Grey scale, line art, batch scanning and batch image processing. The versatile Progression III, combined with the award winning FlexColor software, secures consistent colors in RGB and CMYK workflows. FlexColor 3.0 software provides optimized ICC profiles for automatic color accuracy, minimum noise and consistent ICC profiles between scanner and digital camera back. The FlexColor software is the first of its kind to work jointly or as a stand-alone package for both the Flextight and FlexFrame products. The interface for the Progression III is via a standard SCSI and Firewire.