June 13,2005 -- CAST, Inc. has revealed that the Leaf Aptus digital camera backs announced last month by Creo, Inc. employ CAST IP cores for image compression and decompression. Aimed at professional photographers, the new Leaf Aptus 22 and Leaf Aptus 17 camera backs offer photo resolutions of 22 million and 17 million pixels respectively. Along with fast processors and a variety of convenient storage mechanisms, the lossless data compression implemented by CAST's cores makes the large data files generated by these cameras significantly more manageable.

The cores use the same compression technology recently adopted by Adobe for the Digital Negative (DNG) RAW format standard: Lossless Huffman JPEG (LJPEG). This quality standard is typically used in applications where lossless, high resolution images are critical, such as in medical applications. Added to the JPEG standard in 1995, this little-used but efficient technology is seeing a resurgence because it enables high- performance, bit-by-bit accurate image reproduction using significantly fewer resources than required for other lossless techniques such as JPEG 2000.

"Leaf customers demand absolute image fidelity, and CAST's cores helped us deliver that in our new Aptus line," said Dr. Daniel Seidner, senior project manager at Creo/Leaf. "They also helped us achieve faster image processing, with smaller files and no loss of information. The cores were well documented and easy to implement, and we enjoyed a fruitful and smooth relationship working with CAST."