SAN FRANCISCO--Sept. 25, 2001--Applied Science Fiction, Inc., creator of the award-winning Digital ICE(TM) technology, the leader of automatic photographic restoration applications and the inventor of the cutting-edge digital dry film processing (Digital PIC) system, announces that the company's Digital PIC technology has been chosen as one of the 23 Hot Picks for Seybold San Francisco 2001 in San Francisco, CA. In addition, the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000ED, which incorporates ASF's Digital ICE3 technology, was also selected as a Seybold Hot Pick. "Applied Science Fiction is honored to receive this recognition from the Seybold organization for our breakthrough Digital PIC technology which bridges analog film and digital imaging technologies,'' said Dan Sullivan, ASF's president and CEO. "Applied Science Fiction employees have been working long and hard to bring Digital PIC to market making this recognition especially meaningful. While other ASF technologies have received various international honors, this is the first such award for our patented Digital PIC technology and hopefully the first of many.'' "Applied Science Fiction's dry film-processor technology, called Digital PIC, develops 35mm film directly into an RGB digital format. The benefits include speed and the absence of toxic waste. Rather than giving a film negative, the system gives the consumer a digital negative on CD. Photo labs that solicit work from the general public will find the technology particularly interesting,'' said Peter Dyson, editor, Seybold Publications. Each year, the editors of Seybold Publications give their Hot Picks distinction to the industry's most exceptional new products, technologies and services on display at Seybold San Francisco. This year, 23 products were selected from more than 100 nominees. Digital PIC Process Applied Science Fiction's Digital PIC technology develops 35mm film directly into a high-resolution RGB digital format in one quick step. In the Digital PIC process, micro-amounts of a proprietary developing agent are applied to a roll of exposed but undeveloped film as it is fed through the processor's image-capture engine. The environmentally friendly Digital PIC process requires no water, generates no hazardous effluents, and makes complete silver recovery possible. Next, the Digital PIC system makes a digital record of each image. Once the image data is captured, color data and exposure settings are established on a pixel-by-pixel basis for each element of every image. Complete 24-exposure roll development is accomplished within approximately six minutes of the film being fed to the image-capture engine. Responding to the increasing demand for digitization of photographic images, this "film in, bits out'' technology takes advantage of the high quality images produced by traditional photographic film, allowing traditional and one-time-use cameras to function as digital cameras. Once images have been developed using Digital PIC technology, they can be saved in any standard image file format (e.g., TIFF, JPEG, BMP). Digital PIC output can be directed to different devices, such as printers, palmtops, electronic archives and other storage media, such as CD and DVD disks. Consumers can choose to receive their images as photographic quality prints, in e-mail and through the Internet. After a roll of film is developed using Digital PIC, a unique Extended Range Digital Negative(TM) (XRDN(TM)) is produced on a CD. The XRDN CD offers consumers tremendous flexibility for communicating with images. The XRDN CD includes an index-print file plus high-, medium- and low-resolution image files that provide the consumer a convenient avenue to distribute their images in many ways. Digital PIC allows for consistent image quality, and is Internet and Broadband ready. Configurations for Digital PIC technology include photo kiosks, microlabs, backoffice workstations, backlabs, quick print stations and develop and print kiosks. ASF expects that Digital PIC will be released for commercial use by the first half of 2002. Digital ICE3 ASF's Digital ICE3 (pronounced ice cubed) suite is a combination of ASF's Digital ICE, Digital ROC(TM) and Digital GEM(TM) film restoration technologies. Film scanners integrated with this trio provide professionals and photo enthusiasts alike with simple and automatic image restoration. ASF's groundbreaking Digital ICE3 enables photographers, graphic artists and publishers to make the best possible scanned image files from original color negatives and slides automatically, even if there are scratches or dust on the film, the original color has faded or the images are grainy. Digital ICE3 is currently featured in the Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 ED, which also was chosen as a Seybold Hot Pick. Other film scanners incorporating Digital ICE3 include the Minolta DiMAGE Scan Multi PRO film scanner and the Nikon Coolscan IV ED and Super Coolscan 4000 ED.