Servers--Beyond the Bitmap

The challenge within publishing is how to maximize the usage of existing network and server resources, yet maintain a viable workflow. How do you keep up with the increasing number and volume of files? New technologies are compressing, scaling and reinventing ways to manipulate digital content—signaling the dawn of resolution-independent digital prepress and more effective images.

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO

Future serving. The conversion from an environment where photographic images are described as pixels to a more purely mathematical representation of images will result in fundamental changes in serving processes.

Dennis Aubrey, president at Burbank, CA-based Altamira Group, is intimately familiar with this reality. Altamira Group is a privately held corporation that develops and markets digital imaging solutions. Its mission: Solve fundamental problems facing the digital imaging community and provide solutions that create opportunities for their clients and partners to compete on higher levels.

For Aubrey, this means marketing solutions such as Genuine Fractals, which transforms photographic images into resolution-independent assets by eliminating the relationship between pixels and resolution.

Images are optimized in Adobe Photoshop as usual, establishing how the final image will appear. Any image refinements created in Photoshop are locked in, and the image is encoded using Genuine Fractals proprietary mathematical algorithms.

The end result: The pixels of the final image are replaced with a new structure that stores the entire image, without any pixels. Altamira Group's flagship products, Genuine Fractals PrintPro and PagePro XT, bring resolution-independent imaging to prepress, graphics and printing professionals.

Aubrey explains the creative madness behind this method—and the benefits it has on server performance.

"Currently, we are in the world of file servers. In dealing with raster assets, a server now functions as a device that stores and serves pixel versions of these assets on-demand for use in different parts of the workflow," Aubrey states.

"A single, 24x36˝ lithographic poster could result in a single file of 250MB; this is the size of the asset that must be stored, served and transmitted," he continues. "If the same image is being used as an 8x10˝ cover of an annual report, then an additional version of that image must also be stored at output size and resolution. In this case, more than 300MB worth of data are being used to store a single image asset."

However, Aubrey contends that in a world where photographic images are treated as scalable, vector-like mathematical structures, the model changes considerably. A single image asset can be rendered to any reasonable output size and resolution for output, at the time of output.

For example, using Altamira's Genuine Fractals PrintPro software, a 4x5˝ transparency scanned at 40MB can be rendered to 100MB, 200MB, 300MB, 400MB and up, all from the same file. "These versions of the file will print with extraordinary accuracy," he reports.

What else is out there?

LizardTech, a Seattle-based imaging technology company, is focused on freeing users and networks from large, cumbersome images. With the recently introduced MrSID Publishing Edition, publication-quality images are 3 percent the size of the original imagery, yet maintain the original image quality and integrity.

In addition, with LizardTech's patented Pixels-on-Demand feature, MrSID Portable Image Format files are resolution independent and can be viewed or printed at practically any size or resolution, making them easy to repurpose for a variety of media.

MrSID technology is delivered through a suite of software tools for Adobe Photoshop 5.5, QuarkXPress 4.0, Adobe InDesign 1.0 and Adobe Acrobat 4.0, with plug-ins for other popular applications scheduled for release later in the year and during 2000. When a MrSID image is printed, the resolution required for the target output device is created on-the-fly. And just like Adobe Acrobat, users have free access to MrSID viewing and printing technology for the supported layout, design and Web browser applications.

For example, a 55MB, 9x12˝ original image scanned at 400 pixels per inch can be saved in the MrSID Portable Image Format resulting in a 1.6MB, multi-resolution image. This single image can then be imported into a page layout application, like QuarkXPress, at its original size, at one-tenth of its original size or expanded to 1,600 percent to fill a poster—and every size in between.

"Today's publishing workflow relies on networks to transfer files from one workstation to the next, creating an open workgroup environment," states Michael Reiher, general manager of LizardTech. "With the majority of design and production now being done digitally, the volume of text, graphics and images that organizations must transfer and store is increasing. This slows the overall transfer rate of files and consumes local workstation and server disk space—with one of the biggest offenders for exhausting network capacity and storage resources being imagery."

Iterated Systems, a developer of next-generation digital imaging systems, recently released STiNG reXpress, a repurposing and resolution management server that provides resolution independence. This makes it practical to transfer print jobs electronically and repurpose images at different sizes and for different media. Designed to meet the critical demands of advertising agencies and printing for brand management, STiNG reXpress increases productivity by speeding digital image production workflows and decreasing time-to-market.

Color Technology (CTI), a printing and prepress shop that handles print ads for Nike, Microsoft and Miller Brewing, is a STiNG reXpress user. At CTI, a recent workflow was reduced from 255 minutes to 20 minutes with STiNG reXpress, in addition to a substantial increase in revenue through new image product offerings.

As a repurposing and resolution server product, STiNG reXpress enables designers who work with high-res image files to work with images captured at a medium resolution. STiNG reXpress' resolution on-demand enables rapid reuse of an image and substantially faster edits and file transfers.

STiNG reXpress creates files that are scalable and resolution independent, taking up less disk space while retaining original image quality. STiNG's visually "lossless" encoding automatically grabs the most significant data, about 10 percent of the original file data, to produce the same quality output, quickly transmitting it to a printer or service bureau across an intranet, extranet or the Internet. For example, using visually lossless encoding, a 1GB image can be reduced to about 54MB.

What will technologies from Altamira Group, LizardTech, Iterated Systems and comparable software providers ultimately mean to the server of tomorrow?

In a world where images are described as scalable structures, servers will need to be more robust in order to support entirely new areas of activity. Servers will become image servers—not simply file servers.