Timestone Software provides digital imaging software for use by the school and sports photography industry. The software can handle all aspects of the digital imaging workflow - from applications for use by the photographers right through to production stage in the lab.

Note that even though it is mainly the school and sports photography industry that makes use of it, the software is perfectly suited for any other application where digital products need to be produced and printed en mass.

A modular approach is employed for the product range - you only purchase the components required for your particular application. This might be as simple as a single application to print, say, baby announcements or as complex as that required for a lab that prints composite groups, packages, trader cards and memory mates, from digital image capture using multiple photographers and printing to a myriad of printers.

The product range can be divided into the following categories:

Production Applications

At the heart of the system are the production applications. These applications are responsible for the formation and printing of the actual digital products. Depending on which application you use you are able to create products such as:

• Composite group photos
• Traditional group (name-under) photos
• Portrait packages
• Memory mates
• Trader cards
• ID cards, proof/order cards, camera cards etc
• Book marks and other novelty items
• Certificates
• Magazine covers
• Mug/proof sheets

The above list is by no means exhaustive. Production is based on user-defined templates so you are free to create any number of templates to match the products your lab produces.

All the necessary tools are included in each application. This includes (but not limited to) functionality to:

• collect, arrange and match the images and data
• color correct and crop the images
• export the images and data (as required for the creation of yearbooks or for use by school administration programs for example)
• create the user-defined templates
• form the products and print to any printer

These production applications are generally known as the Neo applications. Depending on what you want to produce, all you require is one of the Neo applications.

People often ask us what is so special about our software. We point out that there's nothing that our production software does that you couldn't do manually in a painting package such as Adobe's Photoshop® - assuming you were intimately familiar with Photoshop of course - but how quickly and how easily could you do it?

Our software, although powerful, is renowned for being straight forward and extremely easy to use.

Remote/Photographer Applications

There are three applications which fall into this category which are designed for use by photographers.

DataPost & CapturePost

The first two applications are designed to work together where subject data is generally available (such as school and sports photography) and capturing images from a tethered digital camera.

• CapturePost: used on site on photography day to capture images from a tethered digital camera and match the images to people from a database.
• DataPost: used to prepare a file that is to be used by CapturePost and includes the ability to print out identification/order cards to be used on photography day. After photography day, further work and reporting is possible with DataPost.

Both of these applications allow the entry of order information as an option. Order information is used by one or more of the Neo production applications to automatically create whatever requires printing according to the orders.

OutPost

The alternative is our newest application OutPost. OutPost is an easy to use application that allows the photographer total creative freedom over the design of packages and preparation of the pages.

For a lab that employs (or does the printing for) a number of photographers, each photographer can be equipped with a pair of CapturePost and DataPost or single OutPost application. The photographer is able to provide finished jobs ready for the lab to process and print the required products.

Note: CapturePost and DataPost are able to provide files for use by labs not using our production software.

Performance Printing

The optional utilities in this category can be used to increase the output throughput from production to printer.

Each Neo application has the ability to print to any printer. When printing, the resulting page is rendered (or ripped) first. This, however, can take some time and the operator is forced to wait while this happens. The utilities in this category can help this situation.

These utilities are:

• PrintTime: to offload the rendering process to another workstation. The Neo applications are able to 'print' to a special file called a Timestone Print Job file. This happens relatively quickly so the Neo application operator is free to continue on with the next task. PrintTime monitors for Print Job files, renders then prints them.
• RIPTime: since PrintTime is now busy rendering files, the printer may be waiting for PrintTime to finish the next job. To help, RIPTimes can be introduced to help PrintTime in the rendering process. The overall result is faster throughput to the printer.

Miscellaneous Applications

Finally, two applications to round out the range - one to optionally collate the pages before printing and an application for use by school administrators to view student images and print various products,