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LUNA IMAGING ANNOUNCES DRAMATIC SOFTWARE PRICE REDUCTION
Building Visual Collections in Insight Just Became Affordable
CULVER CITY, CA - Jan. 11, 2005
In a bold move to make building and sharing visual collections more affordable,
Luna Imaging, Inc., announced a dramatic cut in the price for Insight, its powerful
visual collection software used by top institutions for research and teaching.
The steep price cut brings Insight within reach for all libraries, museums and
universities, says Luna Chief Executive Officer Harvey A. Goldstein.
"In order to make Insight available for everyone, we had to eliminate significant
barriers to access and one of those was price," Goldstein says. "The new value
proposition means a much larger community sharing millions of images, thereby
creating increased value for every user."
Lunašs new academic fee structure represents a significant reduction from past pricing,
which averaged $41,000 for the software and $8,100 a year for maintenance. Insight is
now available for as little as $3,700 a year for a subscription supporting collections
of up to 8,000 images. The software can also be purchased or subscribed to
with no image limits for a one-time price of $5,000, along with annual maintenance
of $3,700. Premium support is available for an additional $2,000 a year.
Along with the price reduction, Luna is offering more from its software. Limits
on the number of collections and the use of a variety of powerful tools for adding
content to collections have all been lifted.
However, the lower pricing is available only through the end of March. Those who
purchase Insight during this time will have price protection and a price guarantee.
But, there is no assurance that the price will remain the same after March 31.
The price cut reinforces Luna Imagingšs commitment to the concept of building content
through community, says Luna Imaging Chief Operating Officer Alton Hoover.
"No one can build a complete visual collection for the arts and humanities by themselves,"
Hoover says. "We believe the price reduction will be a catalyst for institutions to
build visual collections that can be shared and used."
Insight now serves as the platform of choice to share, manage and explore hundreds of
thousands of images online, which when combined create an unparalleled resource in the arts
and humanities, ranging from fine art to historic maps. Unique to Insight is a rich toolset
for working with images and multimedia, including zooming on image details,
conducting side-by-side comparisons, annotating images and more.
Replacing the traditional slide carousel, Insight revolutionizes the way teaching and
research are conducted at many leading educational and cultural heritage institutions
from Stanford University to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Using Insight, instructors are
building visual presentations for classroom use that can be as simple as a slideshow
rotating through each image, or more complex comparing multiple images side-by-side.
Once a presentation is saved it can be reused and published online for further student study.
"Colleges and universities are transitioning to digital collections to service a population
that has grown up with technology and expect dynamic teaching and research tools like Insight
in the classroom and dorm room," Hoover says.
The price reduction further demonstrates Lunašs commitment to help lower the cost of
digitization and expand access. In December, with the release of Insight 5.1, Luna helped
to lower the cost of ownership by adding support for MySQL, the worldšs most popular
open source database, which is an attractive alternative to higher-cost, commercial
database offerings. In addition, new support for Safari, the default web browser for
Mac OS X, expands access to collections powered by Insight.
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