Canon Australia has announced plans to launch an online image management service to help Australians control their ever-expanding image collections.

The new service will be designed to make it easy to safely store, organise and access participants’ photos and videos ““ regardless of what device they were captured on ““ from a central online hub. It will feature simple upload options, sophisticated indexing and tagging functionality, and two-way social media integration. While details of the service and fee structure are yet to be announced, Canon confirms that the service will be a paid model with an emphasis on complete privacy of users’ images and data and enabling total user control of their collections.

Canon is featuring the new service at The 2013 Digital Show at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre Friday 13 ““ Sunday 15 September with daily presentations on the stand. Canon has opened registrations of interest for people to be among the first in Australia to experience it and participate in testing and refinement to ensure the best possible features and user experience.

A free trial will available by invitation late this year to those who have registered their interest. Details of the trial will be provided at the time of invitation. To help shape the service, Canon will also encourage participating users to share their thoughts and feedback, as well as suggest ideas for new features.
For people interested in trialling the service, simply visit canon.com.au/manage to register. A video tour is available on the site to give a taste of what’s to come, including:
*   Easy auto upload with smart internet bandwidth management;
*   Find your images quickly and easily with an intuitive user interface and auto sorting by date and device, as well as easy tagging and album creation;
*   Social media integration, including the ability to automatically pull in images from social media channels together with a record of comments, and publish from your collection out to social platforms (Facebook/Flikr);
* Image access, management, sharing and creating from one convenient online hub that puts you in control.

The public launch of Canon’s image management service is scheduled for the first half of 2014, when full service details and fee structures will be unveiled.