Fratelli Alinari

http://www.alinari.com/

Fratelli Alinari IDEA SpA, established in Florence, Italy in 1852 is the world's oldest firm operating in the field of photography, that is in the fundamental sector of images and communication. Its archive preserves over 3.5 million vintage images from all over the world. The history of Alinari coincides with the very history of photography: the activity of the dynasty of Alinari photographers is at the heart of the huge heritage housed in the present Alinari Archives. It is a heritage which is becoming larger and larger and which, thanks to a sensible policy of new acquisitions and new photographic campaigns, ranges from daguerreotypes to modern colour photographs. Alinari is today the leader in traditional and multimedia photographic publishing and is a synonym for the highest quality in the production of artistic prints.

Alinari is very active in research, in addition to being a worldwide well know photographic archive, a Museum of History of Photography, a Publisher, a Multimedia Lab and a Fine Art Company. Recently the firm has put strong effort into R&D activities such as: image analysis, multimedia indexing and content based retrieval, watermarking, IPR, DRMS and content protection, semantic-web applications, intelligent agents, intelligent digital photo enhancement and restoration, JPEG 2000, MMS, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 standards. Alinari is currently taking part in several EC projects such as SCHEMA, Orpheus, ECMADE, TNT and 2Kan. The company has published several technical articles about content protection and system validation in the field of IEEE and IS&T. Alinari also regularly participates in the European Cultural Conferences series EVA and it is a member of the I3A and JPEG international standards bodies.