Photocopying – Projection printing and copying cameras – Identifying – composing – or selecting
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-10
2001-03-06
Adams, Russell (Department: 2851)
Photocopying
Projection printing and copying cameras
Identifying, composing, or selecting
C348S236000, C396S310000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06198526
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus, in a digital photographic service for recording information to order printing of image data, a method and an apparatus for receiving this information, a printing method and a printing apparatus for reproducing the image data as printed images, and a computer-readable recording medium which records a program for executing these methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a digital photographic service in which photographic prints are generated from image data, an order placing method wherein a user provides a laboratory or the like with the content of the order, such as the quantity of the prints, in the form of digital data has been known.
Some digital cameras have a function to set the print quantity or necessity of printing. Such a camera sets this information by recording it in a memory of the camera as a portion of tag information added to image data. In this case, a user can order printing by providing a laboratory or the like with the digital camera itself whose memory holds image data and its tag information added thereto or with another recording medium wherein. the image data have been recorded.
Furthermore, another method wherein an order file separated from the image data and describing the content of the order alone is provided to the laboratory has also been known. In this method, in the case where image data have been stored in the laboratory or the like, only the order file needs to be provided. Therefore, it is suitable for the case where the amount of data to be transferred is preferably reduced, such as the case where orders are placed via a network. Furthermore, by separating the order file from image data, the location of the image data can be indicated by the order file, which leads to more freedom of storage location.
In the method wherein the content of an order is added to image data, in order to automatically receive the order and to carry out printing by a printer in a laboratory, it is necessary to set a storage location (directory) in a recording medium from which the printer reads the image data and to store the printing target image data in this predetermined directory. This recording medium is then provided to a laboratory. For example, when a plurality of directories exist in a recording medium, it is necessary for a certain directory to be a directory from which a printer reads image data, and image data need to be stored in this directory when an order is placed.
Meanwhile, because of the spread of large capacity removable recording media such as ZIP discs and MO discs, the number of image data sets which can be recorded within a single recording medium has been increased. Therefore, there is a need for storing image data under a plurality of directories. For example, customers wish to store image data classified by events, such as photographs taken on a trip and at an athletic meeting, or classified by types of cameras by which image data have been obtained.
In such a case, in the method wherein the content of an order is added to image data, it is necessary to store image data only in a predetermined directory designated by aprinter. Therefore, it is necessary to place an order to a laboratory after image data having been stored in a plurality of directories are moved into the predetermined directory. Thus, ordering prints is thus very troublesome.
Furthermore, since the content of an order needs to be specified separately for each image data set in this method, a request to make a composite photograph by using a plurality of image data sets cannot be met.
Meanwhile, in the method generating an order file, the location of image data storage can be specified in an order file, if the location of an order file storage or a directory is predetermined. Therefore, a need for customers to store image data according to a classification, as has been described above, can be met. Furthermore, since image data are separated from the content of an order, printing of a composite photograph specifying a plurality of image data sets can be dealt with.
However, in this method, it is necessary that all images are displayed and confirmed after they have been photographed, in order to decide whether or not the images are to be printed. Furthermore, in this method, since the content of a printing order regarding a plurality of image data sets is described in one file, the order file size is not known before the file is actually generated. As a result, a problem sometimes occurs such that an order file cannot be generated in an environment wherein the capacity of a memory is restricted.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention solves the above problem by providing a laboratory or the like with an order file describing a portion of the content of an order and image data to which the rest of the content has been added.
In other words, in an order information recording method of the present invention which records image data and the content of an order regarding print output of the image data in a recording medium as digital data,
image data to which first order information describing a portion of the content of the order has been added are recorded in a first recording medium; and
an order file including location information showing the location of the image data to be printed and addition information showing that the first order information has been added to the image data is recorded in a second recording medium.
The “image data to which order information . . . has been added” refers to order information included in tag information in an image file format such as EXIF, JPEG, or TIFF wherein the tag information is added to the head of image data, for example. Alternatively, both image data and order information may be recorded in a file such as a FlashPix file proposed by Eastman Kodak Co. for recording plural data sets whose nature is different from one to another, for example.
The “location information” refers to information specifying a directory, or a file, or a group of files wherein image data to be printed are located, for example. The group of file herein referred to means the case where all files having a certain extension are specified by using a wild card (like *.jpg), for example.
The “addition information” refers to a flag or the like which takes a value of 1 if the first order information added to image data exists, and takes a value of 0 otherwise, for example.
To “record image data and an order file . . . in a recording medium” refers not only to the case where image data and an order file are recorded in a recording medium such as a FD, a ZIP disc, an MO disc, or an IC card, but also the case where image data and an order file are recorded temporarily in a memory of a computer in order to transfer them from a user to a laboratory via a network, for example. In this case, the first recording medium may be the same as or separate from the second recording medium.
It is preferable to record second order information showing the content of an order in the order file.
The content of an order represented by the second order information may be the same as or different from a portion of the content of the order represented by the first order information.
It is preferable that the first order information shows the content of processing for each image data set and the second order information includes the content of processing which is common among image data sets. In this case, it is preferable for the second order information to include information specifying a combination of image data sets.
More specifically, it is preferable that the first order information includes quantity information specifying the quantity of each print, trimming information specifying an area in an image to be printed, and size information specifying the size of each print, for example.
Moreover, it is preferable that the second order information includes template information specifying a template describing a combination of plural image data sets, character st
Adams Russell
Birch & Stewart Kolasch & Birch, LLP
Fuji Photo Film Co. , Ltd.
Fuller Rodney
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