For the millions who still shoot film, converting photographs into digital files is at best time-consuming and at worst confusing and frustrating. Applied Science Fiction (ASF) has developed ASF Digital PIC, a revolutionary dry-film processing system housed in self-serve kiosks. These simple touch-screen vending machines can produce CDs and prints directly from 35-mm film cassettes in only a few minutes.

Using a kiosk requires minimal computer skills. In about 7 minutes, the Digital PIC system can develop a 24-exposure roll and simultaneously digitize the images onto a CD. The first image thumbnail displays within 4 minutes of inserting your film roll, with new ones popping up every 7 seconds. The touch screen lets you work with the thumbnails, choosing among basic, easy-to-use image corrections (brightness/contrast, color adjustment, and red-eye). Crop and zoom functions are available for 8-by-10 print enlargements. You can then print out as many copies of only those images you wish.

The dye-sublimation printer in the kiosk produces print quality on a par with that of typical 1-hour photo services.

The one drawback of the system is that it destroys the original film negative. To counteract this, ASF calls the DigiPix CD a "digital negative." Each photo is digitized into three files: 1,600-by-2,496, 1,268-by-1,978 and 512-by-768. In other words, the top resolution is roughly equivalent to that of a 4-megapixel digital camera file, while the lowest is Web- and e-mail-ready. The CD automatically displays a thumbnail index when inserted into a computer and includes a slide show utility.

Prices will be set by each individual kiosk operator. At the location we used (CameraLand in New York City), we paid $5.95 for processing a 36-exposure roll, the CD, and an index print. Prints ran 39 cents for a 4-by-6 and a reasonable $5.99 for an 8-by-10. ASF has kiosks in some CVS stores now and expects to have them in more stores, hotels, cruise ships, airports, and other locations early in 2003. (ASF will list the locations on its Web site.)