“Our mission at DxO Labs is to transfer the latest results in applied mathematics academic research to technologies and solutions for our customers,” comments Frederic Guichard, DxO Labs Chief Scientist. “DxO Lighting and DxO Noise are good examples of our academic partnerships – both are based on recent academic breakthroughs which have been very quickly adapted to real life challenges to serve the imaging community.”

The central character in both spots is a stylish young male who, armed with the Olympus m:robe, travels through a variety of different lifestyle scenarios inspiring cool, alternative dance moves in people you wouldn’t expect to be able to groove, including an elderly tourist couple, a little boy playing piρata at his birthday party, two bridesmaids and a couple of football tailgaters.

“The DxO Technology Foundations are at the heart of all our imaging solutions,” adds Jerome Meniere, CEO of DxO Labs. “As a result, DxO Lighting and DxO Noise will soon be integrated in all our products and solutions – for digital camera and cameraphone vendors, mobile operators, as well as demanding photographers.”

About DxO Lighting technology

DxO Lighting technology selectively adds light to shadow areas in any image and automatically corrects tone variations that have been digitally captured but not revealed. As a result, pictures enhanced with DxO Lighting more accurately reflect the reality of the scene as it would have been perceived by human vision.

Unlike competitive technology, DxO Lighting is both fully automatic and robust. DxO Lighting never degrades image quality – dark objects stay dark, highlights are preserved and color consistency is maintained, ensuring natural looking results. As a result, DxO Lighting can be implemented in a variety of environments, such as embedded in digital still cameras, cameraphones or PCs, etc.

DxO Lighting is based on an algorithmic breakthrough opened by recent mathematical research that makes possible pixel-precise and real-time image segmentation on low- cost and low-memory processors. This new mathematical approach has been successfully combined by DxO Labs’ scientists with the latest understanding of human perception to develop DxO Lighting technology. DxO Labs has filed several patents for this new technology.

About DxO Noise technology

The race for more megapixels results in pixels with a smaller physical size. The smaller their physical size the more noise increases. As a result, noise removal is one of the major challenges faced by image capture device manufacturers.

DxO Noise is a breakthrough technology that performs fully automatic noise removal on digital images. Thanks to a new theoretical approach, results are far beyond any competitive technology on the market today. Images corrected by DxO Noise will need up to 4 times less light to deliver identical image quality. As a result, shooting latitude can be extended to higher sensitivity which allows users to reduce exposure time, ensuring no blurring when shooting motion scenes or in a dim light environment.

DxO Noise is an original, low cost implementation of the “Non Local Means” noise removal approach, recently introduced by Professor Jean Michel Morel’s team1. This technique has been strongly improved by incorporating a complete description of the sensor noise that involves statistics such as intensity, spot shape and size, coloration index, etc., and takes various influent parameters into account.

DxO Noise can benefit any device ranging from cameraphones to professional digital SLRs and can be implemented in a variety of environments, such as embedded in digital still cameras, cameraphones or PCs, etc.

About DxO Labs and its DxO Technology

DxO Labs is a software company developing image generation and enhancement technologies. We provide reliable off-the-shelf solutions for companies in the imaging business such as digital camera or cameraphone manufacturers, mobile operators, and printing or photofinishing professionals as well as serious amateurs and professional photographers, and photography journalists and experts. The company's patented DxO technologies, the DxO Technology Foundations, are the result of stateof-the-art academic mathematical research. The DxO Technology Foundations comprise a set of software components to generate images or correct major imaging defects, such as Color, Contrast, Blur, various Optics faults, JPEG artifacts, etc.

For more information, visit DxO Labs online at www.dxo.com.