Patent ID: 7487155

Claim:
A digital image management system comprising: an electronic storage facility for providing storage for high resolution digital images of a plurality of unrelated image providers, at least some of the high resolution digital images stored in the electronic storage facility being used to develop corresponding low resolution copies, each of the high resolution digital images having a higher bandwidth communication requirement than each of the corresponding low resolution copies, the electronic storage facility storing the high resolution digital images of a first one of the image providers, such that the high resolution digital images of the first image provider can only be accessed by an authorized user identified by the first image provider, and such that the high resolution digital images of the first image provider are transparent to other unrelated image providers that are not authorized users identified by the first image provider; means for notifying an authorized user identified by the first image provider that the authorized user has been authorized to download a low resolution copy corresponding to one of the high resolution digital images, wherein the notifying means transmits at least a portion of a pathname associated with the low resolution copy to the authorized user; means for allowing the authorized user to download the low resolution copy corresponding to one of the high resolution digital images of the first image provider from the electronic storage facility to a first location; and means for electronically routing one of the high resolution digital images to a printer in response to a request from the authorized user.