Photocopying – Projection printing and copying cameras – Identifying – composing – or selecting
Reexamination Certificate
1999-02-09
2001-04-24
Metjahic, Safet (Department: 2858)
Photocopying
Projection printing and copying cameras
Identifying, composing, or selecting
C358S451000, C358S487000, C358S527000, C382S298000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06222613
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an image processing method and an image processing apparatus.
With the popularization of digital printers producing prints on the basis of image information, opportunities of handling images incoming from various types of image inputting media and/or devices have proliferated. As an example, when the prints are produced by image information originating from various types of digital camera, a signal conversion technique in the predetermined color domain, which is standardized on the basis of subject intensity at the camera, is typically applied to the image information originating from the digital camera, in order to homogenize the image quality.
In reality, however, the accuracy of conversion into the predetermined color domain and an optical systems for capturing images have varied with various sorts of digital cameras. Owing to this fact, it has not been a simple task to homogenize the image quality, even if the predetermined color domain is standardized at the camera side.
In addition, with the increase of memory capacity for storing image information in digital cameras, the number of images, taken by the digital camera, have also increased. Therefore, in order to produce prints with the image information incoming from various types of digital cameras, it is required to rapidly determine the conditions necessary for image processings, corresponding to many image information. Development of such a method and an appropriate apparatus has been an urgent task in this field.
In addition to digital cameras, digital images incoming from various types of image inputting media have different image sizes (defined as vertical and lateral pixel number of image information). For example, in the case of print production based on an image information, an exclusive image processing system, which corresponds to the type of the image information, is required for adjusting the color/density. This fact has resulted in complexity of the processing system.
In a system called “Digital Mini-Lab.”, specifically comprising a film scanner, a print production process, wherein various kinds of image processings such as a color compensation, etc. are performed on the basis of the image information obtained from the film scanner, has been established. It has been an urgent goal for such a “Digital Mini-Lab.” to have a function of corresponding to various types of digital images without adding to the operator's work load.
In a printing system for producing prints from various kinds of photo documents, a system for automatically adjusting the print quality has been adopted to reduce the operator's work load for the additional quality manipulations. There have been drawbacks, however, such that finished print quality is not neccessary sufficiently good, e.g., a print of rear-lighting image being finished with too much dense tone, etc. Although it has been expected to introduce a system for automatically adjusting the print quality in the field of digital media such as digital cameras, etc. to reduce the operator's work load, such a system has not been realized so far. Further, in the system of “Digital Mini-Lab.” wherein simultaneous print processing of plural prints gathered from the media mentioned above is possible, it is desirable that the automatic adjusting system should have the capability of always finishing prints with constant image quality irrespectve of media type, as well as stable print quality of each medium. So far, however, such a system does not yet exist.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The primary objective of the present invention is to provide an image processing method and an apparatus for processing the image information incoming from various kinds of image inputting media, wherein a homogenization processing of image quality and a synthetic image processing are performed in a common system.
In order to minimize the aforesaid problems and to achieve the abovementioned objective, the present invention includes such an image processing method and image processing apparatus, described as follows:
1) an image processing method, comprising the steps of:
inputting the first image information;
converting the first image information into a predetermined image size to generate the second image information; and
applying image processing to the first image information or the second image information, on the basis of the second image information, to generate the third image information,
2) an image processing method, comprising the steps of:
inputting the first image information;
converting the first image information into a predetermined image size to generate the second image information; and
generating an image processing conditions for the image processings on the basis of the second image information,
3) an image processing apparatus, comprising:
means for inputting the first image information;
an image size converter to convert the first image information to the second image information having a predetermined image size; and
means for applying a image processing to the first image information or the second image information, on the basis of the second image information, to generate the third image information, and
4) an image processing apparatus, comprising:
means for inputting the first image information;
an image size converter to convert the first image information to the second image information having a predetermined image size;
means for generating image processing conditions for the image processing on the basis of the second image information.
In the present invention, the inputting means is defined as means for inputting image information which is equivalent to image signals representing images, which includes electric signals, optical signals, magnetic signals, etc. The inputting means includes CD-ROM, Floppy Disk Drive, Magnet-optics Disk Drive, means for reading data from media such as Hard Disk, etc., means for receiving image information via communication lines, a scanner for reading images recorded on documents, etc.
The term of “fixed size” defined in the present invention designates a size being in a range of ±35% of the predetermined image size.
It is desirable that the predetermined image size is set at a larger size than the fixed image size having a large number of pixels sufficient to discriminate a main subject (such as a human figure, a plant, a building, etc.) existing in an image. On the contrary, it is also desirable that the predetermined image size is set at a smaller size than the fixed image size having a small number of pixels sufficient to eliminate details of microstructure which are irrelevant to the main subject, e.g., granules existing in silver-halide photos.
Accordingly, in the image (color/density) processing described later, it is possible to obtain characteristic values pertaining to the main subject in the image and stable processing results with little influence of various visual noise which is irrelevant to the main structural element in the image.
In addition, when image printing is performed on the basis of the third image information, the larger the finished print size, the smaller the region which can be recognized as the main structural element. Although an appropriate image size of the second image information is apt to be getting large accordingly, it is not so much change as is the difference of the print size. Therefore, it may be appropriate that the image size of the second image information is predetermined in a range of 190-500 pixels in the longitudinal dimension of the image.
Now, the image processing methods and the image processing apparatus related to the present invention will be described in detail, item by item as follows. (1) After inputting image information from plural kinds of image inputting media, the first image information, which is input so as to have the same image size, irrespective of the kinds of image inputting media, is converted to the second image information by a resolution conversion method. Then, image processing is performed on
Haraguchi Tsuyoshi
Nomura Shouichi
Yamanaka Yoshiaki
Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner L.L.P.
Konica Corporation
LeRoux Etienne
Metjahic Safet
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