JPH0449471A - Image editing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain efficient image edition by dividing an image into plural areas, collecting several areas as a group, forming a hierarchical memory in each group, executing image edition such as interpolation in each hierarchy, and displaying respective hierarchical memories while overlapping them. CONSTITUTION:An image is divided into plural areas by an area division part 10, respective areas are hierarchically formed by a hierarchical structure forming part 11, the image data of each hierarchical area is stored in the hierarchical memory 12, and while holding the hierarchical structure, the movement, deletion, etc., of these areas are executed. Area specification can easily be executed in each divided area unit. Since the movement and deletion of the areas are executed in each hierarchical memory unit, a trouble deleting information in another hierarchy can be removed. In the case of interpolating a blank part due to hierarchy, only one area exists around the blank part by hierarchy, so that the interpolation can easily be executed by filling the blank part in the area. Thus, efficient image edition can be attained.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

[fi required] Regarding image editing devices that input and edit image information to create new images, the purpose of efficient image editing is to read image information and edit colors, brightness, and patterns. an area dividing unit that divides an image into a plurality of areas considering a uniform area as one area; a hierarchical structure generating unit that determines the depth relationship of the areas generated by the area dividing unit; A hierarchical memory that divides the depth into several layers based on the output of the generator and stores image information for each layer, and when an image in a certain layer is moved,
an area interpolation unit that interpolates the area before movement using surrounding image information; an editing operation unit that performs image editing by manually inputting editing information such as commands; and an image display unit that displays the output of the hierarchical memory as an image. It consists of [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to an image editing device that inputs and edits image information to create a new image. In recent years, computers have become multimedia. In multimedia, image information holds a large weight along with audio information and the like. Under these circumstances, it is not enough to use images that have been manually input to a computer as they are, but there is a demand for performing some kind of processing on the images and displaying the processed images. For example, in a landscape image, the location of a house may be moved, a person may be added, or the type of trees may be changed. Therefore, there is a need for an image editing device that can easily and efficiently change the color of an object, move it on one image, erase it, copy a part of another image, etc. [Prior Art] In conventional image editing, in order to specify the area to be edited, the operator must sequentially specify the boundaries surrounding the area using a pointing device, etc., as shown in FIG. 8(a). , required a great deal of effort. When moving the selected area, the area to be moved and the destination are specified, and the movement is performed on the image. In that case, as shown in FIG. 8(b), the destination 1 at that point is
The area will be overwritten. As a result, the information of the area at the original position 2 is lost. As a result, area 2 (hatched area) after the movement becomes blank. like this

[7] The interpolation of the image into the blank area is performed by an operator's instruction or by estimation from information on images surrounding the blank area. Editing work is performed by repeatedly moving areas like this. [Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In conventional image editing methods, when an area selected for editing is moved, the moved area is overwritten, and the image information of the overwritten part is lost. There was a problem with it getting lost. Further, as shown in FIG. 9, it is impossible to move and insert an area in front of a certain area to a space after another area. That is, in FIG. 9, it was not possible to move region 3 to 3' and insert it before region 4 and after region 5. Also, when the area that becomes blank due to area movement (the shaded area in the figure) is interpolated from the surrounding area, surrounding information is used, so when moving from area 6 to 6- as shown in Figure 10, Another problem is that it is difficult to determine what kind of interpolation to perform when there are multiple areas around the area. When interpolation is performed, the image quality of that part often deteriorates, but if the editing work is repeated, the image quality of that part will often deteriorate. Since interpolation is performed for blank areas each time the data is erased, there is also the problem that the image quality deteriorates significantly. The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and its primary purpose is to provide an image editing device that can efficiently edit images. [F stage for solving the problem] FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the principle of the present invention. In the figure,
10 is an area dividing unit that reads image information and divides the image into a plurality of areas by considering a part with uniform color, brightness, pattern, etc. as one area; 11 is the area dividing unit] a hierarchical structure generation unit 12 that receives the output of the hierarchical structure generation unit 11, divides the depth into several layers, and stores image information for each layer;
Reference numerals 13 and 14 refer to an area interpolation unit 13 that interpolates the area before movement using surrounding image information when an image is moved to a certain layer;
Reference numeral 17 denotes an editing operation section for inputting editing information such as commands to perform image editing, and 15 indicates an image display section for displaying the 111 output of the hierarchical memory 12 as an image. [Operation] While the area division unit 10 divides the area, the hierarchical structure generation unit 1 hierarchizes the area, and the image data for each layered area is stored in the hierarchical memory 12. This allows areas to be moved, deleted, etc. while maintaining the hierarchical structure. At this time, the area can be easily specified in units of divided areas. Furthermore, since the movement and deletion of areas is performed within one hierarchical memory unit, there is no problem of deleting information in other hierarchies. In addition, when interpolating a blank area due to layering for [Hierarchical Memory] 2, there is only one area around it due to layering, so interpolation is easy if you fill the blank area with that area. become. As described above, according to the present invention, efficient image editing can be performed. [Examples] Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. The principle diagram in the figure will be explained in more detail.The area dividing unit 10 reads the image information as described above and divides a plurality of images by considering a portion with uniform color, brightness, pattern, etc. as one area. Figure 2 shows an example of area division.For example, if there is an original image as shown in (a), it is divided into areas with uniform color, brightness, pattern, etc. If we consider parts that can be seen as ``moon,'' the roof of a house, a wall, and a tree as one area, and divide the image into multiple areas, we will have 6 areas 21 to 26 as shown in (b). In this way, each divided area becomes a target area for image editing.A region instruction from the editing operation unit 14 in editing is performed by specifying a point inside the divided area. It is possible to easily perform fj in one step.Furthermore, in the region dividing section 10, the four verators can verify and correct the results of the automatically performed region division. As described above, the hierarchical structure generation section 11 includes the area division section 10.
This is to determine the depth relationship of the areas generated in . FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a hierarchical structure of regions generated by the hierarchical structure generating section 11. Items that are the same as in Figure 2 are the same as 7]
The numbers are indicated by A and I. This depth relationship may be relative, and there is no need for an absolute difference in distance. The depth relationship is determined using an image structuring technique. Here, it is assumed that the hierarchical structure generation unit 1 has a function for an operator to verify and modify the result of automatically generated hierarchical layering of regions. In this way (7, the layered area is written to three layered memories, for example) 2. The layered memory 12 is
As shown in FIG. 4, a plurality of image memories (image memory 1 to
The image memory 3) is configured in a hierarchical structure, and hereinafter this image memory will be referred to as a hierarchical memory. In a typical image, the number of regions is extremely large, so it is impossible to write all the regions as separate hierarchies into the hierarchical memory. Therefore, the hierarchy generation section 11 uses the editing operation section 14.
According to the operator's designation, several areas are grouped together and stored in one hierarchical memory. For example, in Figure 2, area 2
Since both numbers 5 and 26 are part of one tree, they are treated as one hierarchy. In this way, at 17, in FIG. 4, the moon is stored in the image memory 1, the house is stored in the image memory 2, and the tree is stored in the image memory 3. The area interpolation unit 13 performs interpolation for the blank portions of the areas in each hierarchical memory 12 that have become areas or other layers as a result of the layering and have disappeared. This interpolation method examines the area around the blank area, generates an image, and fills in the blank area. Or, do it by making =1 be around the surrounding area. In this case, as shown in FIG. 5, only one area exists around the area due to the layering, so interpolation is easy. Here, it is assumed that the operator has a function that allows the operator to verify and modify the shape of the region to be interpolated. The image editing operation unit] 4 has the following functions for each hierarchical memory 12:
Hierarchical memory] Image editing operations are performed in units of 2. [Image display section] 5, the contents of the hierarchical memory 12 are superimposed in order from the deepest to the lowest, and the image 1 is displayed without overlapping.
Show elephant. This makes it possible to sequentially display images resulting from editing. In this case, no image information is lost. Furthermore, the image display section 15 can improve the efficiency of editing work by changing the order of the layers when displaying images or by displaying only a specific layer. FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention. Components that are the same as those in FIG. 1 are designated by the same reference numerals. The image input unit 30 inputs an image to be edited into the editing device. The input image is divided into regions with uniform color, brightness, pattern, etc. by the region dividing section 10. The area dividing unit 10 first divides the image into a plurality of small rectangular areas (blocks) using the block dividing unit Oa. Next, feature extraction section 1. Characteristics such as color and brightness of each block are determined in Ob, and a block merging unit 10c merges blocks with similar characteristics to generate an area. Block merging section 1. The region division results output from Oc are displayed by the dialog section 31, and the operator makes corrections to inconvenient portions while viewing the results. The added modification is reflected in the region division result by the modification unit 10d. The corrected region segmentation result is sent to the hierarchical structure generation unit 11. In the hierarchical structure generation section 11, first, the contour line of the area is extracted by the contour extraction section 1]a. Next, the structure of the contour is analyzed by the contour analysis section 1 lb. As shown in FIG. 7, when the contour lines intersect in a T-shape, it can be considered that region (2) is located in front of regions (2) and (2), considering the structure of the tree. Here, the intersecting relationship of the T-shapes of all contours in the image is examined to examine the context of the region. Structural analysis department 11. c determines the hierarchical structure of the entire image from the local contour structure determined by the contour analysis unit 11b. Here, the obtained hierarchical structure is displayed by the dialog section 31, and the operator makes corrections to inconvenient parts while viewing the result. At the same time, a plurality of regions are grouped together to form one hierarchy. The results are reflected in the hierarchization results by the modification/grouping section 11d. The hierarchical areas (groups) are
The information is written to the hierarchy memory 12 in units of hierarchy. There will be blank spaces in the written area due to layering, but
Interpolation is performed by the area interpolation unit 13 as necessary. Here, interpolation is performed according to the operator's instructions (interpolation position, interpolation form, method) manually input from the editing operation manual section 32. For interpolation, when copying another part of the same area, the interpolation area generation unit 1.3b copies the interpolated part. On the other hand, when creating the same pattern by analyzing patterns in other parts, the image analysis section 13a calculates the density average 1 variance of the other parts,
A method is used that calculates model parameters to approximate the pattern, then generates an image of the interpolated part, and fills in the blanks. The editing operation unit 14 performs operations input from the editing operation input unit 32 in units of hierarchical memory. The editing operation section 14 can also read out and copy another image (area) stored in advance from the image database 33, if necessary. The image display unit 15 displays an image by overlapping the contents of the hierarchical memory 2 in descending order of depth. This makes it possible to sequentially display images resulting from editing. In addition, the image display section 15 can change the order of the hierarchy when displaying,
It is also possible to display only a specific hierarchy. In the above description, area division is performed by block division, but area division may be performed by other methods. Furthermore, although the hierarchical structure generating section is structured using T-shaped intersections of the contour lines of regions, it may be structured using the Dana technique. Furthermore, the hierarchical memory may be operated and displayed by layering one image memory using software. [Effects of the Invention] As explained in detail in 1-1, according to the present invention, an image is divided into regions, several regions are grouped together into groups 1-), and a hierarchical memory is set for each of these groups. 10. We propose an image editing device that can perform image editing such as interpolation for each layer and display images while overlapping the layer memory (j%
It can have great practical effect.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the principle of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of dividing an image into regions. FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a hierarchical structure of regions. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of the structure of a hierarchical memory. Fig. 5 is an explanatory diagram of interpolation after layering, Fig. 6 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 7 is a diagram showing the anteroposterior relationship of regions, and Fig. 8 is an explanation of conventional image editing. 9 is a diagram showing insertion between other areas, and FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example when interpolation is difficult. In FIG. 1, ]0 is a region dividing section, 1] is a hierarchical structure generating section, 12 is a hierarchical memory, 13 is a region interpolating section, 14 is an editing operation section, and 15 is an image display section.

Claims (4)

[Claims] (1) An area dividing unit (10) that reads image information and divides the image into a plurality of areas by considering areas with uniform color, brightness shading, pattern, etc. as one area, and the area dividing unit ( a hierarchical structure generating section (11) that determines the depth relationship of the regions generated in step 10); and receiving the output of the hierarchical structure generating section (11), divides the depth into several layers and generates image information for each layer. A hierarchical memory (12) for storage, an area interpolation unit (13) that interpolates the area before movement with surrounding image information when an image in a certain hierarchy is moved, and image editing by inputting editing information such as commands. An image editing device comprising: an editing operation section (14) that performs the following operations; and an image display section (15) that displays the output of the hierarchical memory (12) as an image. (2) The image editing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein editing operations such as area interpolation, area movement, and deletion are performed using each memory of the hierarchical memory (12) as a unit. (3) The contents of the hierarchical memory (12) are superimposed in descending order of depth, and are displayed on the image display section (15) while overlapping so that the front area is on top. The image editing device according to claim 1. (4) The image editing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a function of changing the depth order of the hierarchical memory (12) and a function of displaying only a specific hierarchical memory.