 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Altamira Software" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1991 |
| Founder | Alvy Ray Smith, Eric Lyons, Nicholas Clay |
| Fate | Acquired by Microsoft |
| Headquarters | Mill Valley, California, U.S. |
| Products | Altamira Composer |
| Parent | Microsoft (1994–) |
Altamira Software was an American software company. The company developedAltamira Composer, an early object-based image editing and composition application for Windows that introduced features such as anti-aliased effects and image sprites. Altamira Software was acquired by Microsoft in 1994.
Altamira Software was founded inMill Valley, California by Dr.Alvy Ray Smith, Eric Lyons and Nicholas Clay in 1991.[1]
Seed capital came from Autodesk and second-round financing from a team of venture capitalists (TVI) and private individuals.
The company was acquired byMicrosoft in 1994.[2][3] Thea Grigsby was Vice President of Marketing. David Shantz of WildOutWest, LLC was responsible for branding, package design and the development of a series of image object libraries that were released along with the product.
The company's primary product was Altamira Composer. ThisPC based software pioneered object-based drawing and image editing. Composer was one of the first to bring important tools such asanti-aliased effects andimage sprites to the desktop.[citation needed]
Altamira Composer, one of the first image composition applications with image sprites (i.e., non-rectangular, floating images), entered the market in November 1993 (CoSA After Effects 1.0 shipped in January of that same year).
