CPXe: Web Services for Internet Imaging

D igital cameras promise instant gratification—you can take a picture and immediately print it or send it to others. In practice, however, consumers typically find manipulating, printing, and sharing digital photos frustrating, expensive, and timeconsuming. Digital camera and software vendors offer various solutions to streamline the workflow, but these proprietary approaches often limit choice and flexibility, preventing users from fully realizing the benefits of digital photography and restraining overall industry growth. Standardized film sizes, processing types, and photofinishing options have long enabled the traditional film-based industry to grow and thrive, with many vendors offering a rich variety of services. To provide similar support for the digital photographic services market, Kodak has joined with other industry companies—Agfa-Gevaert, Beaufort Solutions (formerly Gretag/Telepix Imaging), Fuji Photo Film, Hewlett-Packard, Konica, Noritsu, Olympus America, Pixology, Shutterfly, and SilverWire—to create the Common Picture eXchange environment (www.i3a.org/i_cpxe.html). CPXe is a highly interoperable service delivery framework that leverages the Web services paradigm to give providers access to an expanded market and offer consumers a broad range of digital imaging services. Multiple providers can register their services in a central directory and precisely characterize their offerings using an extensible catalog and order model as well as a comprehensive dictionary of terms. A service locator mechanism lets consumers easily select vendors offering the products and features they desire. CPXe’s initial focus is to give users the printing options they are accustomed to, with the additional ease and flexibility enabled by digital technology. Customers can submit orders using a browser or desktop application, a kiosk, or even a networked digital camera and have their pictures printed at any participating retail or online fulfillment service, with retail-based services offering both in-store pickup and postal delivery. CPXe also gives retailers the flexibility to directly provide a portal or end-user application or to partner with camera vendors or global portal providers.