Image Processing and Conversion
On-demand file conversions and processing, all from a single master
Disc space might be cheap, but staff time isn’t. When your designers have to recreate scores of variant images every time a master is updated, you waste resources. Using Cumulus, you store a single copy of a master image, and nothing more.
Why do the manual work that Cumulus can do for you? Configure easy menu options that perform processing for specific needs, such as websites, email or presentations, or even let users choose cropping regions and other manipulations on the fly. No one needs to know Photoshop and, more importantly, no one needs to own it.
Aviation giant Lufthansa flies over 70 million passengers annually, but it doesn’t strive to match that number with asset variants. Their Cumulus system is configured to provide several output options for cataloged images, which saves their designers from becoming image factories, and it means additional output options can be added at any time without creating thousands of new files.
The need for Cumulus-created variants is different for Swedish photo reproduction specialists Linjepunkt Repro. In their workflow, massive, multi-gigabyte (!) images are just too large to move across networks more than necessary. Instead, Cumulus enables them to work with lower resolution proxy images for layouts and comps. For final output, the master image is used, thanks to an OPI system integration with HELIOS. Linjepunkt Repro’s Pär-Anders Björklund explains.
“Images keep getting bigger and bigger, so HELIOS OPI remains essential for us. And Cumulus offers the best HELIOS integration.”
But images aren’t the only thing Cumulus can produce, as Dr. Rudolf Mumenthaler from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) found.
“Cumulus offered image processing and conversion options that other systems didn’t. It’s very useful, for example, that lecturers can find images and download them as PowerPoint slides.”
Other image processing capabilities offered by Cumulus include watermarks, color space conversions, scaling, rotating, cropping and much more. For additional power, it’s easy to integrate Cumulus with the ImageMagick image processing engine and other external tools. Best of all, no matter how complex the processing beneath, it’s always nothing more than a menu option for users.
For more information how the on-demand processing capabilities of Canto Cumulus can benefit your organization, contact your local Canto partner or Canto today.
