Casio’s digital art frame converts photos into works of art

Casio is kicking off the new year with a Digital Art Frame that can take an ordinary photo and transform it into a work of art. It resembles a digital picture frame that you can use to display photos. But this one has a new twist: you can use it to create photo images or original art works.

The Japanese camera maker says the frame is part of its quest to transform cameras from mere photo-taking instruments into creative digital imaging devices. You can display snapshots on the device and transform one photo into eight different artistic images using a “snapshot-to-painting” automatic conversion function.

The device, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, also has face recognition technology that allows you to delicately alter human faces and expressions in a photo. That means they aren’t just photos anymore, but creative works that look realistic. Users can upload these masterpieces to a blog or social network via a built-in wireless network in the frame. You can also create your own images to adorn a digital clock or calendar.

The art styles include: Water Color Painting, Color Pencil Sketch, Pastel Painting, Pointillism, Air Brush, Oil Painting, Gothic Oil Painting, and Fauvist Oil Painting. The frame uses Adobe’s Flash Lite playback technology, which lets users display preset Flash content, such as clocks and calendars.

The product will be available in the spring. It has a 10.1-inch screen, two gigabytes of memory, an SD memory card slot, stereo speakers, and a power-saving display that turns on when someone approaches the screen.

Casio is also introducing a new line of high-power zoom digital cameras. The point-and-shoot, compact digital cameras have 10X optical zoom lenses to shoot distant subjects. The EX-H15, EX-Z550, and the EX-Z2000 all feature the ability to combine different moving images into a single video or image, right on the camera. The company calls this Dynamic Photo, where one photo can be like a cut-out image that can be pasted into another photo that forms the background. The cameras can easily upload videos to YouTube and have faster engines that increase image processing speed by 30 percent.

Casio also has a high-speed model, the EX-FH100 (pictured above), capable of taking 40 shots per second. The 10X zoom camera can also record a video at a rate of 1,000 frames per second. The latter is capturing images at a rate that is faster than the human eye can see. One of the models has a dynamic photo function that can combine one set of moving images with another set, creating a composite image.

The company is also introducing a new mercury-free high-brightness data projector family. The projectors are thus more environmentally friendly and energy efficient. The Green Slim projectors (pictured) can produce images with 2,000 lumens brightness, which means they can compete with other kinds of projectors on image brightness and quality. The projector is about the size of a standard 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, is 1.7 inches high, and weighs five pounds. It can connect wirelessly with a PC.