PHOTO CD BRINGS FAMILY ALBUM INTO ELECTRONIC AGE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 20, 1993                   TAG: 9302200355
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RICH WARREN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
PHOTO CD BRINGS FAMILY ALBUM INTO ELECTRONIC AGE
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this column will attempt the maxim-defying feat of covering a hundred pictures in less than a thousand. Those hundred pictures can be summed up in less than two words: Photo CD.
The Photo CD looks like an ordinary CD, except it's gold. Each disc stores up to 100 high-resolution color photographs. To view them you need a special Photo CD player connected to your TV. A Photo CD player also will splendidly play your audio CDs. However, if you attempt to play a Photo CD on your existing stereo system, you'll blow your speakers all the way to Rochester, N.Y.
Rochester is the home of Eastman Kodak, the company best known for peddling film in an increasingly electronic age. Kodak markets the Photo CD players and is responsible for the technology to transfer your film to CD. The system is the development of Dutch-based Philips. That's the company that co-developed the CD and DCC, and is the innovator of Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-I).
Philips spun off the Photo CD from its CD-I research. Philip's CD-I players will play Photo CDs, and Philips manufactures the dedicated Photo CD players for Kodak.
Here's the Photo CD picture in a word: remarkable. Although Kodak offered to transfer our slides to Photo CD, time was short. So we tested the system using Kodak's demonstration disc, and a unique book/disc about Australia called "From Alice to Ocean," by Robyn Davidson and Rick Smolan.
The 223-page coffee table book contains hundreds of glorious photos. The barely 5-inch Photo CD contains even more equally glorious photos with spoken narration by Davidson and Smolan, accompanied by sound effects. While Kodak limited home Photo CDs to 100 photos, professionally produced Photo CDs can hold many more, plus audio.
Viewing the Photo CD on a 32-inch XBR-2 monitor yielded a higher quality video than from any other source, including laserdisc. Photo CD virtually eliminates video noise. The color purity and accuracy are breathtaking. The resolution stretches conventional TV to its limit - a taste of high definition TV viewable on existing TVs.
You simply shoot a roll of print or slide film and take it to specially equipped photo stores for processing. Initially you'll have to send the film to Kodak. Send in four 24-exposure rolls per disc, either all at once, or you can add rolls one at a time to an existing disc until the disc contains about 100 photos.
The disc comes in a plastic jewel box just like a CD. Numbered miniphotos of each picture on the disc line the insert. That allows you to use the random access feature on the player, just as with a CD player, to go straight to your favorite shot. The Photo CD also functions as master negative to make prints.
The players strongly resemble Philips CD players, with additional features. All but the most basic model permit viewing the picture full-frame, which means it will be inside a black background; full-screen, which means a little cropping; or blown up in a 2x telephoto format.
You can move a framing box around the screen to decide exactly what to crop and which portion to enlarge. The player can remember your choices for every subsequent viewing of the photo.
Photo CD players also can remember your choices of photos. You can program it to skip those unwanted pictures of someone's knees, and to show the photos in a preferred order. The player stores these memory functions, not the disc. Philips originally designed this system as Favorite Track Selection (FTS) for audio CDs, and the Photo CD players also include FTS.
Owners of computers with CD-ROM XA drives benefit from even higher resolution images from Photo CD. With the addition of special software, you can manipulate and edit Photo CD images in your own electronic "darkroom." You can add or eliminate people from photos and change backgrounds, besides more honest uses such as touching up poor exposures.
The first Kodak Photo CD players range from $400 to $600, with a five-disc carousel-style changer on the way. Prices for developing film and transferring onto a Photo CD are steep, at approximately $20 per 24-exposure roll.
Kodak promises dozens more features and uses for Photo CD. However, those pictures will have to wait since we've run out of words.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB