Canto Announces Cumulus 5.5 - a Major Upgrade to its Award-Winning Digital
Asset Management System

Canto is proud to announce an all-new version of Cumulus with its
soon-to-be-shipped Cumulus 5.5

January 8, 2002, San Francisco, CA. Today at the Macworld Expo, Canto
announced that Cumulus 5, the award-winning Digital Asset Management
system, has received a major upgrade to version 5.5. New features include a
Palette View Mode, improved IPTC support, so called Server/Client Asset
Transfer, as well as numerous other features that customers have requested.

"Canto has produced 10 minor updates to Cumulus 5 since its release - all
of which have been free of charge to customers," says Jennifer Neumann, CEO
of Canto. "With the release of Cumulus 5.5, Canto is now delivering
additional features and even more power and value to its customers without
raising the price on any of the three Editions: Enterprise, Workgroup, or
Single User."

"Cumulus 5.5 has been in development and quality assurance for quite a
while now," adds Ulrich Knocke, Senior Product Manager for Cumulus. "As a
result, we've been able to integrate many features that our customers have
requested and have done so while ensuring that Cumulus 5.5 is a stable,
reliable program."

Key User Benefits of Cumulus 5.5

=85 Improved IPTC support. IPTC (International Press Telecommunications
Council) is a standard used by photographers, newspapers, and magazines to
include additional metadata on photographs and images. Cumulus 5.5 now can
save the metadata to the original assets - in addition to writing it into
XML-Files and TAG-files.

=85 Palette View Mode. The Palette View Mode makes it more convenient for
users to use Cumulus as a helpful tool when working with other applications
such as Adobe InDesign, Quark XPress or Adobe Photoshop. In the Palette
View Mode Cumulus integrates perfectly into those applications and appears
as one of their palettes.

=85 Server/Client Asset Transfer. This allows clients to access assets via
established Client/Server TCP/IP connections; clients no longer need to
have access to the File Server with the original asset. This new feature is
especially helpful in cross-platform environments because it reduces system
requirements to the networking infrastructure. It also allows telecommuters
access to assets and makes setup easier for server administrators since
AssetStore Options can be installed only on the server.

=85 Integrated URL AssetStore and ZIP AssetStore. The URL AssetStore is
integrated as a light version into Cumulus 5.5; it resolves FTP and HTP
asset references. The ZIP AssetStore Option is now included in Cumulus 5.5
as a fully working version free of extra charge. Previously the ZIP
AssetStore was sold as a separate $69.95 Option.

=85 Remote Admin. Now Cumulus allows remote admin and configuration of
Cumulus Workgroup and Enterprise servers via standard Internet browsers.

=85 Numerous other features. Cumulus 5.5 includes a variety of other
user-requested features such as the ability to print contact sheets, sorted
lists with type-ahead functionality, an improved slide show feature, the
ability for HTML output to consider the orientation of thumbnails when
publishing assets to the Web, availability of the "Convert to=8A" file forma=
t
conversion functionality in the Single User Edition now as well and many
other features.

Price and Availability
Cumulus 5.5 will be priced the same as Cumulus 5 - so users will get much
more value for the same price. The Single User Edition will sell at $99.95,
the Workgroup Edition will sell at $ 995 for the server (Mac OS, Windows)
or $1995 for the server (UNIX; IRIX, Linux, Solaris) and $295 per client
for Windows and Mac. Pricing for the Enterprise Edition is available on
request.

Cumulus 5.5 will be available as downloads on Canto's website under
www.canto.com in early February. Box versions with CD and printed manuals
will be available at the same time.

Upgrades of older versions will be offered for a minimal price and will be
available in early February in Canto's eShop at http://www.canto.com.

All products will be available from Canto sales partners as well. Anyone
who purchases Cumulus 5 after January 1, 2002 can receive Cumulus 5.5 free
of charge when it ships.

For more information on all Cumulus products and services and to download
demo versions go to:
http://www.canto.com.

About Cumulus
Cumulus 5.5 is the perfect archiving system for multimedia data (aka
digital assets). The Cumulus 5.5 platform also offers a flexible base for
any kind of workflow solution for assets in production. Cumulus is a
high-end application for managing and publishing all types of media assets
such as images, layouts, presentations, video, audio and text. The program
offers powerful search capabilities, comprehensive customizing options,
e.g. user-definable fields, and Internet access, incl. HTML export,
emailing and more. When cataloging digital assets Cumulus automatically
reads the contained metadata, creates a thumbnail and references to the
original data - no matter which storage media they are on. The Cumulus
product line consists of three Editions: Single User, Workgroup,
Enterprise, plus additional Options offered either by Canto or Partner
companies.

About Canto
Founded in 1990, Canto is a leading supplier of Digital Asset Management
products and services. Canto is committed to deliver world-class solutions
at an inexpensive price to the creative arts, publishing, corporate
communications and other industries. The company's product line "Cumulus"
is designed to manage and archive all types of digital assets used in
production, publishing, communication, and other workflows. The Cumulus
product line offers cross-platform and Internet technology that scales
completely from Enterprise to Single Users. With hundreds of thousands of
Cumulus licenses sold, and more than 9,000 client/server systems installed
worldwide, Canto is the clear market leader measured by market share.