Kodak System Puts Images on Audio CD

SAN DIEGO —  Carlsbad resident Leonard Snyder, 64, who has snapped photographs most of his life, predicts a bright future for Eastman Kodak’s new Photo CD system, which transfers images from 35-millimeter film to compact discs that can be played on television sets or used in desktop computer publishing.

“If I were a young man just starting out with kids, I’d for sure buy one of these things,” said Snyder, who was at a Dow Stereo store in San Diego for Thursday’s nationwide Photo CD introduction. “I’d much rather have one of them than watching slides.”

Kodak’s digital system allows consumers to continue snapping away with their trusty 35-mm cameras. But in addition to having color prints or slides made, consumers now can ask a local photo developer to transfer images to compact audio discs.

Photo CD is Kodak’s latest bid to become a player in the fast-paced consumer electronics market. The world’s leading purveyor of photographic supplies hopes Photo CD will help it weather growing competition from a new breed of electronic cameras that capture images without film.

Kodak officials said it will cost about $20 to transfer 24 images to discs that can hold about 100 images. It is selling a special Photo CD player that can also be used to play music CDs. Dow Stereo on Thursday offered Kodak’s base model for $379.

A remote-control device allows the user to “zoom in” on a portion of any photo displayed on the screen. During a demonstration of the device, Kodak executives used the “framing guide” to magnify a photo of a parrot’s head taken at the San Diego Zoo.

Users also can program the machine to display select images--for example, highlighting vacation photos on a disc but bypassing birthday party shots. Early next year, film processors will have the technology needed to add customized sound tracks to discs at the time images are transferred.

Consumers also will be able to consolidate their best photographic images by transferring them to a single CD. Photo processing firms also will be able to duplicate those discs for customers who want to send electronic images to relatives with Photo CD players.

Though the product unveiling emphasized the consumer electronics market, Kodak officials expect Photo CD to prove popular in desktop publishing.

“Photo CD is going to impact the corporate world quicker and with a bigger variety of products than the consumer side,” said Tommy Morgeson, owner of Dallas Photolabs and a vice president of the Assn. of Professional Color Labs, a national trade group.

“In corporate presentations alone, this is going to change the business,” Morgeson said. “I’ve seen Photo CD (images) on a 35-inch Mitsubishi color TV with stereo sound . . . compared to slide shows or overheads, it’s enough to blow your socks off.”

Next month, Kodak will unveil software to be used with Apple Macintosh or IBM-compatible computers that will ease the transfer of electronic images to computers and high-speed printers. That should make the product more attractive to those who create newsletters or documents, or prepare corporate presentations.

Analysts said Photo CD marries the traditional strength of film--capturing images--with the ease of use of electronic image display. They maintain that Photo CD must succeed if Kodak’s film business is to survive the technological revolution that devastated its home-movie camera business.

Kodak now sells little in the way of home-movie film, but during 1991, still-camera film and photographic supplies generated $1.3 billion in operating earnings on sales of $7 billion.

Kodak executives are painfully aware that the chemical-based film business is under assault by electronic still cameras that capture images without film. Kodak, which is manufacturing the electronic guts of a Nikon camera now on the market, plans a related “major product announcement” early in August, spokesman Paul H. McAfee said.

Morgeson said Photo CD should be warmly received by professional photographers.

“Film still gives you the quality image . . . and that’s not going to change in the foreseeable future,” Morgeson said. “But the electronic display is amazing, it gives photographers complete control over their images.” They can move things around (electronically), touch them up electronically and catalogue their images electronically.”

Photo CD also is expected to appeal to publishing companies that handle tremendous numbers of photos. The technology also could find a market among libraries that now are struggling to preserve color photographs that fade over time because of their chemical composition.

Kodak hopes that its Photo CD system will eventually set the standard for computerized color images. To be successful, it must persuade film developers to buy expensive processing equipment and CD manufacturers to add electronic chips that allow audio CD players to accommodate Photo CD.

Kodak also is signing agreements with computer software manufacturers to ensure that their new products will accommodate Photo CD, McAfee said.