What is Photo-CD?
The Photo-CD system was defined jointly by Philips and Kodak in 1991. The system allows for the storage of very high quality photographic images on a compact disc. The system is based on the CD-i Bridge specification to allow for the playback of Photo-CD discs on CD-i players, Photo-CD players (an overview of all Photo-CD players is available in the Related Technologies section of this site) and other systems. Photo-CD was introduced as a complete consumer service product. Consumers were able to request for a Photo-CD when they brought their 35mm film to a Kodak photo-finisher for development. The resulted disc contained all of the photos in a variety of image resolution qualities. The disc could be returned to the photo-finisher to add more photo’s, up to a total of slightly over 100 pictures. For this, the multi session feature was added to the CD-Recordable definition in the Orange Book. The pictures on a Photo-CD a coded according to a Kodak-developed compression technique called P
Photo CD is a system introduced by Kodak for digitizing and storing black and white or color negatives or transparencies on compact disks your computer can read. Each disk can hold about 100 high quality images. You can have a Photo CD made from your film at the same time it is developed, or you can have a disk made from a collection of slides or cut negatives. The first method is more convenient and costs less per frame; the second method lets you choose the images you want scanned and usually costs less overall. You can also have images appended to an existing Photo CD; this creates what is called a multisession disk. Regardless of whether you start with a negative or a slide, your photographs are stored on the CD as positive images, and you can get excellent results from either. Kodak does not currently offer a service for scanning prints to Photo CD — to do this you will either need a flatbed scanner or you will need to photograph the prints and send in the film to be developed an
