New industry print standard proposed

Canon, Fuji , HP, Olympus, Epson and Sony today announced a proposal for an industry standard that enables consumers to easily print photos by directly connecting their digital still cameras to their printers - no PC required.

Until now, each company had its own proprietary solution for direct printing - without a computer - between their own branded digital still cameras and printers. This situation has proven to be limiting to consumers, as they are unable to achieve the same convenience and ease of use when using a combination of products of different brands. The unified specification, tentatively named "DPS," ensures compatibility across digital cameras and printers, regardless of brand, giving consumers the flexibility and simplicity to create high-quality photos.

The specification was originally developed by Canon, HP, Seiko Epson and Sony. Fuji and Olympus later joined discussions and collectively the specification was finalized. Together, these six companies, all leaders in digital imaging, will continue to advocate industry adoption of this new standard, which is expected to spur the growth of digital photography.

About DPS
DPS specifies an application layer control protocol and is independent from any physical transport. It was designed to be extensible for implementation on future physical interfaces. The DPS version 1.0 document, which will be published formally later, is written for USB as a physical transport and Picture Transfer Protocol(1) as data transfer protocol. Consumers can simply connect a DPS-enabled digital still camera to a DPS-enabled printer, using the camera to perform operations and easily print high-quality photos.

The following features are supported by a DPS system according to the recommended specifications:

• Print an image displayed on the digital still camera
• Print two or more images selected from the display on the digital still camera
• Automatically print images using the Digital Print Order Format(2) specification
• Print an index of all images
• Print all images

The following features are available using the print setup option:

• Print part of the image by specifying clip area
• Print multiple copies of a single image
• Print with date
• Specify exact size of a print

The following printer status information is displayed on digital still camera:

• Establishment of DPS connection
• Printer Error
• Printing progress
• End of print
• Cable can be safely disconnected