PhotoStreak Significantly Speeds the Sending of Photos over the Internet

HILTON HEAD, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 10, 2001--Compression Engine Technologies Inc., a leader in digital image compression, has introduced two new powerful and easy-to-use products that significantly speed the sending of digital images across the Internet.

PhotoStreak, an Internet Photo Accelerator, is a free full-featured download for personal use that allows for significant compression of digital images. PhotoStreak Pro is an enhanced version that is available for use by corporations and government users for .95. Both are available for download at www.photostreak.com.

"Whether it's to family and friends or an online photo developer, sending high-quality images over the Internet via e-mail has been one of the most frustrating tasks for the average personal user," according to Debbie Michelle, director of product marketing.

"The problem to date has been that the file sizes created by today's high resolution digital cameras and scanners are far larger than can be reasonably sent over still-popular standard dial-up Internet access lines."

In fact, as Internet usage at home has soared to now include 58% of U.S. households, or 162 million Web users, 88% of them are still using modem speeds of 56 Kbps or less. (Source: Nielson/NetRatings). And, according to a recent study by SBC Communications 62%, more than 100 million, of these users are sending photos via e-mail. That's a lot of wasted time waiting for large-file images to upload and download. PhotoStreak has just solved that problem.

PhotoStreak enables people to speed the sending of their photos over the Internet by speeds of 5 to 10 times faster. Sending these photos faster over the Internet leaves more time for other activities online.

PhotoStreak works by significantly compressing the digital image, while maintaining superb visual quality and image size, to a small file size that outdated compression techniques, such as JPEG and GIF, cannot accomplish. PhotoStreak can reduce a 2MB file size to 20 KB (a ratio of 100:1) or smaller while maintaining excellent image quality.

In fact, PhotoStreak can compress some images 200 to 300 times while still maintaining acceptable image quality. PhotoStreak utilizes a patented and proprietary technique based upon wavelet compression.

A comparable quality JPEG file for the same image would be 5 to 10 times larger (around 100 KB to 200 KB) than a PhotoStreak file.

Another benefit of PhotoStreak's smaller file size is that it consumes significantly less storage space. PhotoStreak images consume only about 20% of the storage space that similar-quality JPEG or GIF images require.

The PhotoStreak format is also available to Web site developers through the PixFire Web development tool. PixFire enables Web developers to place PhotoStreak images on their Internet sites. It is a low-cost () software program that provides immediate and powerful results.

Using PhotoStreak images on a Web site greatly enhances the visitor's visual experience by providing a greater download speed (up to 5 to 10 times faster) of images that are both larger in size and better resolution than JPEG.

In addition, PhotoStreak images consume significantly less server storage space than JPEG images. PixFire also has plug-ins for both Adobe PhotoShop and Microsoft FrontPage 2000 and batch compression for the simultaneous processing of a large number of images.