Imapro 2000 Inc.

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Description

Since the company's inception in 1976 as Imapro Inc., Imapro
Corporation products have played a major role in the developmentof the PC-based business and presentation graphics market. In
February of 1986, Matrix Instruments Inc. (now known as Miles,
Agfa Division), a leading manufacturer of film recorders,
acquired Imapro Inc. and its technology. Imapro Corporation wasformed when the company's original major shareholders regroupedits staff and facilities, retaining the rights to distribute
Matrix film recorders.

Imapro's headquarters, including research and engineeringfacilities, are located in Ottawa, Canada, with manufacturingfacilities located in Charlottetown, Canada. In addition, Imapro
UK, located in Hertfordshire, England, provides sales and servicesupport throughout Europe together with Imapro's recentlyestablished sales and service centre located in Karlsruhe,
Germany. A wholly-owned subsidiary, Imapro Japan, sells Imaproproducts directly in Japan and has consulted with Canon, Fuji,
and other leading Japanese firms.

Imapro's leading products include high-resolution professionalcolor scanners, film recorders, photographic systems, andpre-press systems. Imapro's mandate to ensure superior customersupport and satisfaction has enabled the company to maintain ahigh standard of quality and reliability of all Imapro products.


Imapro's research team continues to provide innovativeengineering to sustain product leadership.

ACHIEVEMENTS
Imapro's recordof achievements is a result of continuedcommitment to improve,
enhance, and create technologically advanced and reliableproducts.

1979 FIRST DIGITAL COLOR FILM RECORDING SYSTEM
In 1979, Imapro developed the Color Image Recorder (CIR), thefirst high-resolution digital color film recording system.
Previous film recording technology required mainframe computersand complex, limited-accuracy electron beam recorders.
Made for the Canadian government, the CIR recorded full-colordigital images from the LANDSAT earth-resource sensing satelliteon photographic film using lasers for the first accurate colorfilm exposure and registration. The CIR recorded 4096x4096 pixelsat 24 bits of color/pixel, with a registration of one part permillion.

1981 FIRST LOW-COST, HIGH-RESOLUTION FILM RECORDERS
Previous commercially-available film recorders (i.e...
Genigraphics and Dicomed) were minicomputer-based and priced atover $250,000, limiting them to service bureaus and largecorporations. An outgrowth of the CIR, Imapro's 35mm filmrecorders made high-resolution (4K, 24 bits/pixel) film recordersaffordable for the first time. In 1982, Imapro licensedmanufacturing rights for these products to Matrix Instruments
Inc., who marketed them worldwide as the highly successful Matrix
QCR and PCR film recorders. These state-of-the-art deviceslaunched the in-house film recorder industry and played a keyrole in the growth of the business and presentation graphicsmarkets. They are the highest-precision office film recordersavailable for use with the
PC-based family and are widely used by business decision-makersat virtually every Fortune 500 company.

1983 FIRST VECTOR-TO-RASTER-PROCESSOR FOR THE PC
Vector-based presentation graphics packages began to appear inthe early 1980s, bringing high-resolution, anti-aliased
(jaggies-free) graphics to the PC. The Imapro QVP, a card for the
PC XT, converted these vectors to run-length-encoded (compressed)
raster image that allowed Matrix film recorders to create colorslides and prints from these software packages. Now marketed by
Matrix as the MVP board, this card is widely used with
Zenographics' Mirage software and over 30 other vector-basedpresentation graphics software packages.

1983 FIRST VECTOR PRESENTATION GRAPHICS LANGUAGE
To interface with vector-based software, Imapro developed SCODL
(Scan Conversion Object Description Language), which has become ade facto industry standard for communicating between vector-basedsoftware packages and film recorders. SCODL was based on the
NAPLS videotex system.

1987 12 MHz VECTOR-TO-RASTER PROCESSOR BOARD FOR THE PC
Imapro introduced the M68000-based MVP+ board, a faster versionof the MVP board. The MVP+ offered 1024K of memory, and mappingof Targa and Vista board imagery to the 4K resolution of Matrixfilm recorders, thermal printers and EGA monitor support.

1987 FIRST PHOTOGRAPHIC-RESOLUTION COLOR SCANNERS
The desktop presentation market had been severely hampered by thelimitations of low-cost color scanners. Usingremote-sensing image processing techniques, Imapro increased theeffective output resolution of a color scanner to fill indetailed pixel data. The result was a photographic-quality,
bit-mapped color image with variable-resolution of up to 3000 dpieffective output resolution (depending on original image area)
that could be scanned in less than five minutes. This technologyeffectively converted a low-cost color desktop scanner into apowerful, digital photographic camera for the first time.

1987 FIRST INTEGRATED PRESENTATION GRAPHICS SYSTEM
As an outgrowth of its pioneering developments in color filmrecording technology, Imapro announced its Photographics 3000
system, the first system to integrate color presentationgraphics, color photography, video and text. Imapro marketed thissystem to value-added resellers as a complete 286/386 PC
presentation graphics system, which included a variety ofgraphics software, an enhanced color scanner. film recorder andoptional color printers.

1988 FIRST PC ON-LINE INTERFACE TO SCITEX WORKSTATION
Imapro's Separator System was the first PC-based on-lineinterface to Scitex workstations, for lower cost design, photoretouching, and page make-up for brochures, advertising andflyers.

1989 PROTOTYPE PREPRESS SYSTEM
Imapro demonstrated its prepress system, reducing the cost ofproducing color catalogues, brochures and flyers. The Imapro Page
Production System is a system offour PC workstations, each ofwhich handles a part of the colorprocess. The Scan Workstation scans images in high resolution;
the Author Workstation allows for page layout; the Composer
Workstation enhances and composes images; Folio provides quickaccess color page store and; the Output Workstation producescolor or black and white proofs, and CMYK film. This is the firstsystem to allow users to efficiently go from design to filmoutput on one operation system.

1990 SCSI WORKSTATION LINK PRODUCED FOR PREPRESS PRODUCTIONS
Imapro performed live demonstrations at Dusseldorf, West Germanyin October during DRUPA 1990 using its Page Production Solution.
This technologically advanced system showcased a new feature, the
SCSI Link, a fast networking solution connecting the PC
workstations and replacing the method of exchanging files by
Exabyte videotape. The SCSI Link along with accelerated RGB-CMYK
conversion software provides an efficient method to producefull-page color separations.

1990 INTRODUCTION OF THE IMAPRO QCR-ZI 8K FILM RECORDER
Unveiled at the 1990 Photokina show in October at Cologne, West
Germany, Imapro announced the new QCR-Zi film recorder capable ofoutputting image graphics files created on PC-compatible and
Macintosh computers at either 4K or the advanced 8K addressableresolution. Six months later, a 35mm version of the QCR-Zi. the
QCR-3548 was released.

1990 FIRST PHOTOGRAPHICS 8K SYSTEM
Imapro presented the newest version of the Photographics Systemat Photokina in Cologne, Germany in October. This enhanced PC
or MAC compatible high resolution photographics systemhighlighted improved quality and processing speed. The
Photographics 8K system specializes in scanning, color adjusting,
cropping, retouching, restoring and composing images at up to 8K
resolution. In addition, the system integrates and processes
Imapro's Postscript compatible RIP.

1990 FIRST "TRUE" 1200 DPI SCANNER
As part of its commitment to the ongoing development of flatbedscanners for the professional market, the company introduced the
QCS-1260 scanner. This innovative scanner, the first of its kind,
scans 600 dpi over the entire 11 "x17" flatbed area and, bymechanically moving the optics within the scanner, scans a "true"
1200 dpi resolution over half of the width (' .8"x17"). Thisunique feature, along with the optical feedback that is providedto ensure constant color fidelity, ensures that a CCD flatbedscanner is a viable option to traditional, more expensive, drumscanning .

1991 MVP+/20 VECTOR-TO-RASTER PROCESSOR BOARD
Introduced at the National Computer Graphics Association tradeshow in Chicago, in April, the MVP+/20 is fully compatible withthe MVP+. Imapro's newest vector-to-raster processor is thefastest image rasterizer on the market. The improved GPIB
performance feature increases the number of images exposed perhour and produces more than 16 million colors.

1991 QCS-2400 SCANNER
Presented at the IFRA trade show in England,the QCS-2400
professional scanner improves on the QCS-1260 byintroducing interpolated scanning at up to 1200 dpi over 5.8x17".
All features of the QCS-1260 remain in the new QCS-2400. Thisprofessional scanner has the increased inflexibility to scan
2.25, 4x5, and 5x7" transparencies and reflective originals at upto 2400 ppi and the unique optical feedback feature ensuresconsistent color fidelity.

1993 QCS-3200 SCANNER
Announced in June, the QCS-3200 professional scanner scans in asingle pass at up to 3200 ppd. The QCS-3200 features all of the
QCS-2400's enhanced capabilities plus the unique opticalfeedback system allowing automatic variation in calibration andsuperior negative and flesh tone scanning performance.

1993 THE FIRST VARIABLE MEDIA RANGE OF PRODUCTS BASED ON WINDOWS
SOFTWARE
The Spring of 1993 saw the introduction of a complete new rangeof variable media products, the first available based around
Microsoft Windows software. Incorporating the new scannerstation, WinScan, utilizing the QCS-3200 scanner. Retouching isprovided by WinComp with output for film separations on WinSetteror digital film on Winimage.

1994 THE QCR-16K AND QCR-32K FILM RECORDERS
Unveiled at the 1994 Photokina show in September at Cologne, West
Germany, Imapro introduced the QCR-16k and QCR-32k filmrecorders. Capable of producing image graphic files created on
PC, Mac and Unix computers at 16k and 32k addressableresolutions, the QCR-16k and QCR-32k feature a new ergonomicfloordesign, a built in hard disk and a premium CRT. The uniquecombination module is available with both models and supportsfilm sizes from 35mm up to 8x10" in either negative or positivefilm type.

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