PictBridge is a historical computing
industry standard
''Industry Standard'' is the sixth studio album by the Dixie Dregs, released in 1982. This was the second of two albums released under the moniker The Dregs, and is their only album featuring vocals (by Alex Ligertwood of Santana and Patrick Si ...
introduced in 2003 from the
Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) for direct printing. It allows images to be printed directly from
digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
s to a
printer
Printer may refer to:
Technology
* Printer (publishing), a person or a company
* Printer (computing), a hardware device
* Optical printer for motion picture films
People
* Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist
* James ...
, without having to connect the camera to a computer. Its formal name is "Standard of Camera & Imaging Products Association CIPA DC-001 — 2003 Digital Solutions for Imaging Devices". CIPA DC-001-2003 Rev. 2.0 has been published in 2007.
Implementation
PictBridge is typically implemented using
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
ports and the USB protocol. PictBridge-capable printers typically have a USB type A port which is connected by cable to the USB port of a PictBridge-capable digital camera (typically a Mini-B). The user selects the images on the camera to print.
Licensing
The PictBridge specification is not an
open standard; it can only be obtained from CIPA after agreement not to disclose any information from the specification to others.
section 2.2 of the agreement
/ref> In practice, this means that PictBridge cannot be implemented as free and open source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
, other than by reverse-engineering the protocol, if publishing source code of an implementation of the PictBridge standard is considered to count as "disclosing information" from the specification.
A printer may implement functions similar to a PictBridge printer without the non-disclosure agreement merely by treating the camera's memory as a USB mass storage device, although the user interface for image selection would necessarily be on the printer rather than the camera in this case.
See also
* Picture Transfer Protocol
Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) is a protocol developed by the International Imaging Industry Association to allow the transfer of images from digital cameras to computers and other peripheral devices without the need of additional device drivers. ...
* Digital Print Order Format
* Mopria Alliance
References
External links
CIPA PictBridge Standard Website
* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090927080404/http://www.canon.com.au/about/press_room/story_830.html , date=September 27, 2009 , title=Explanation on Canon's website
Digital photography
USB