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Adobe Extends Photoshop Product Line with New Photoshop Album Software

Press release from the issuing company

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Jan. 6, 2003-- Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced Adobe Photoshop Album, new software for Windows-based computers that, for the first time, extends the legendary Photoshop brand to the consumer market. With digital camera sales exploding, consumers -- freed from the expense and limitations of film -- have made digital picture-taking an integral part of every family occasion and event. Photoshop Album solves the biggest problem facing these digital camera owners: how to easily find, fix, share and preserve thousands of photos accumulating on their computers. Photoshop Album leaves the competition behind by using an easy and sophisticated 'tagging' system to organize and find images, and leverages Photoshop software's unrivalled image enhancement technology to provide simple, high quality one-click editing. In addition, Photoshop Album is the only consumer digital photography product to take advantage of the ubiquity of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), creating an intuitive way to share digital photos with family and friends. "Photoshop revolutionized photo-editing in the 1990s and was a catalyst for the emergence of digital cameras as a hot new product category for pro photographers and consumers," said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Digital Imaging and Video Products at Adobe Systems. "With Photoshop Album we're extending the proven quality of the Photoshop name to a new generation of digital camera owners, making it easy for them to edit, find and share the millions of digital photos now lying unsorted on computers." Organizing Photos The Album Way Adobe Photoshop Album gathers thousands of digital photos for viewing in one convenient place -- the photo well -- and automatically organizes them by date. From there, it's simple to find a particular photo: a timeline view displays photos taken over a period of time, while a detailed calendar view shows the exact day and month when each moment was captured. Users can bring precise control over finding and working with specific collections of photographs through Photoshop Album software's powerful tagging system. Visual tags can be created to instantly find photos of favorite people, places, events, or any other subject, no matter how large the collection becomes. Editing with Photoshop Precision Photos don't always turn out exactly as planned, so Photoshop Album provides one-click editing tools to fix common problems, such as red-eye, color, contrast and brightness. For more advanced editing, Photoshop Album provides single-click integration for users of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, Adobe's award winning image-editing software for photo hobbyists and amateur photographers. And perhaps most importantly, Photoshop Album is equipped with one-click photo backup to CD and DVD to ensure that memories will be preserved for future generations. Adobe PDF Makes Sharing a Sure Thing Photoshop Album software helps users tell and share the stories of their lives in pictures through entertaining slide shows that can include captions, video clips, and background music. These template-based slide shows are packaged in Adobe PDF, so that Photoshop Album users can deliver their images to anyone who is using free Adobe Acrobat Reader software. With over half a billion copies of this software already distributed across multiple platforms, Photoshop Album eliminates the guesswork of which format should be used to save and share photos -- and whether recipients will be able to view them. Adobe Photoshop Album offers prints and other professional photo services through direct links to online service providers, and an easy-to-follow wizard helps users create cards, calendars, albums, Web photo pages, and even 3D Web galleries with just a few clicks of the mouse. Online services may vary worldwide. Adobe has integrated Intel processor optimizations in Photoshop Album, enabling consumers to see improved performance when running the software on Intel processor-based computers. "Photoshop Album provides the freedom and flexibility to connect with friends and family through pictures anytime, anywhere," said William A. Swope, vice president of the Enterprise Platforms Group and general manager of the Software and Solutions Group at Intel. "The combination of powerful new Intel processor-based personal computers and high-quality, affordable digital cameras has revolutionized home photography. Now innovative software like Photoshop Album allows consumers to get the most out of their PCs and cameras." Adobe Photoshop Album will be debuted at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Intel's booth (Las Vegas Convention Center, Central 3-5, #14607), and will be showcased during Intel's keynote address, taking place on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2003, at 4:30 p.m. in the Las Vegas Hilton Theater. Pricing and Availability Adobe Photoshop Album is expected to ship in the United States in February 2003 at an estimated street price of US$49.99. Photoshop Album will be available for sale on Adobe.com as well as in major retail outlets, including Amazon.com, Best Buy, Buy.com, Circuit City, CompUSA, Datavision, Fry's Electronics, J&R Music and Computer World, MicroCenter, Office Depot, and Staples. International editions are expected to ship in the second quarter of 2003. Information concerning international pricing and support policies is available on www.adobe.com.