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LaserSoft Imaging was founded in spring 1986 by the physicist Karl-Heinz Zahorsky, the president of the company today. LaserSoft Imaging became an early adaptor of color- and image processing on the Macintosh. In fact LaserSoft Imaging was the first to distribute innovative products e.g. video digitizers, such as Pixelogic's "ProViz" and Truvel's "TrueScan", the first professional color scanner for the PC, which was first shown at Hannover fair CEBIT in 1988, which LaserSoft Imaging was invited to by Apple Computer.
Location
LaserSoft Imaging's Headquarters is located in Kiel, Germany, by the Baltic Sea, 60 miles north of Hamburg. Kiel is the capital of the most northern state of Germany, Schleswig-Holstein and known as the international sailing city.
LaserSoft Imaging has another office in Sarasota, Florida, which is about 50 miles south of Tampa, directly on the Gulf of Mexico, with one of the nicest beaches in the world!
The Early Nineties
Due to the deep and comprehensive knowledge that LaserSoft Imaging had aquired over time, in 1990 Hell Graphics, the world's leading drum scanner developer in Kiel, approached Karl-Heinz Zahorsky to become a consultant to Hell, to help with the new emerging technologies rapidly growing on the desktop. In 1991 LaserSoft Imaging became a registered GmbH and moved into a large PrePress house to help in setting up color reproduction on the desktop and to link Chromacom systems to the Macintosh.
With RipLink LaserSoft Imaging presented a system to link major prepress systems, like Hell, Scitex and Crosfield to the Macintosh. The distribution of Leafscanners started the chapter of high end scanners on the desktop. LaserSoft Imaging consulted Leaf, Canon, Sony, Seiko and others with the very special knowledge of desktop high end color that had been gained. LaserSoft Imaging also was the driving force behind the Photone PrePress development, after the product had gone through its infant stages.
In 1994 LaserSoft Imaging started the development of SilverFast, which was first presented in its early stages at CeBIT 1995. Version 2.0 was demonstrated at CeBIT 1996, Version 3.0 was released in December 1996, Version 4.0 in 1998, Version 5.0 in 2000 and the latest, version 6.0 in 2002, demonstrating the fast pace of development at LaserSoft Imaging.
Due to the growth and success of the company, LaserSoft Imaging changed the company into a public corporation (Aktiengesellschaft) in 2001, but there was no need and benefit to be registered at the stock exchange.
Today
As of now, LaserSoft Imaging has created a very great interest in the industry with its developments and won numerous awards with SilverFast. Today LaserSoft Imaging is the only developer having successfully implemented highly sophisticated scan software for all major scanners (over 300) for MacOS and Windows. In the beginning LaserSoft Imaging's software was mainly distributed in Germany, but now, with its international and multi-platform solutions, SilverFast is distributed globally through distributors as well as world-wide bundle agreements with major manufacturers.
Since then the company has grown fast and has opened a US location in 1997. The company now has worldwide and national-wide operating partners such as Canon, HP, Seiko Epson, Cruse, Leica Camera AG, Microtek, Nikon, Pacific Image Electronics, Pentacon GmbH, PFU/Quato, Samsung, Umax; partners that bundle their hardware products with the software SilverFast.
With SilverFast DC-VLT, DCPro and DCPro Studio, a special development for digital SLR cameras with 48 bit raw format support and a Virtual Light Table (VLT) feature, was started in 2002.
In 2005 a unique development started which is now the crown of the SilverFast development: the SilverFast support for the best scanners in the world - the high-end Heidelberg (Linotype) Topaz, Tango, Nexscan and Chromagraph (3300 and 3400) scanners under the latest Mac OS-X (as well as under Windows) Operating System.
Dedicated People
The whole staff at LaserSoft Imaging consists of very dedicated people. The development team is a unique setup of the visionary Karl-Heinz Zahorsky and his developers, each a specialist in the different fields of software engineering.
Karl-Heinz Zahorsky is also a passionate aviator, with flights all over the world and four trans-atlantic flights in his single engine Mooney. See routing and pictures of one of his trans-atlantic flights here!
Commercial register for LaserSoft Imaging AG (Germany): HRB 5739 (AG KIEL)
VAT Id Nr.: VAT-IDENT-NO. DE 134 898 309
VAT Nr.: VAT-NO. 19 291 0236 0 (FA KIEL)
