JP2000165649A - Image processing unit - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To properly process characters in a photographed picture. SOLUTION: An image processing unit has an entry means 11 that enters the information of a picture to which a character picture is added, a character extract means 13 that extracts the picture information relating to the character picture from the picture information entered by the entry means 11 and a processing means 15 that substitutes part of the character picture information extracted by the character extract means 13 for supplementary information.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for performing a predetermined process on an image read by a scanner or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In silver halide film photography, characters such as a date are partially overlapped with a subject image.

When a negative or printed image to which a date or the like is added in this way is read by a film scanner or the like, and is digitized and recorded, it is possible to convert the date or the like into data (for example, JP-A-8-139908). No.).

[0004]

However, after the date and the like are converted into data, it is not necessary to keep the date and the like in the image, but in the prior art, characters such as the date remain in the image as they are. Would be.

[0005] The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems, and has as its object to provide an image processing apparatus capable of appropriately processing characters in a photographed image.

[0006]

According to the present invention, there is provided an image processing apparatus comprising: input means for inputting image information of an image to which a character image is added; Character image extracting means for extracting image information, and processing means for replacing a part of the character image information extracted by the character image extracting means with complementary information.

Preferably, the character image information extracted by the character image extracting means is date information.

In the image processing apparatus, a character recognizing means for generating character information from the character image information extracted by the character image extracting means, and the character information generated by the character recognizing means are obtained by the processing means. It is preferable to further include a recording unit that records the image information together with the image information.

According to the present invention, an image in which a character image such as a date is removed from a captured image can be obtained by replacing a character image information portion with complementary information. Further, by recording character information such as a date together with image information, even if a character image is removed, information such as a photographing date and time can be left.

[0010]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration example of an image processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

The image processing apparatus 10 is externally connected to a film scanner 20. Image data such as negatives and prints read by the film scanner 20 is input to the RAM 12 via the interface circuit 11. It has become.

A date extracting circuit 13 is connected to the RAM 12, and the date extracting circuit 13 extracts a character image portion such as a date from an image read by the scanner 20. For example, based on a predetermined density, a part with a lower (or higher) density is extracted as a character image part such as a date. When date information is extracted, a character image portion may be extracted from the entire image area for one frame. However, with a normal camera, as shown in FIG. 4, any one of the four corners of the image area for one frame is used. In many cases, date information is recorded in the portion. Therefore, it is preferable to extract the date information only from the area shown in FIG.

A character recognizing circuit 14 is connected to the date extracting circuit 13. The character recognizing circuit 14 recognizes characters from the character image information extracted by the date extracting circuit 13, and converts date information from the recognized character information. Is to be generated.

A median filter 15 is connected to the date extracting circuit 13 so that the character image information extracted by the date extracting circuit 13 is replaced with complementary information. The median filter is a widely known technique, but the processing in this embodiment will be briefly described as follows.

For example, in the date extracting circuit 13, the numeral "9"
Is extracted, the information of the extracted portion is sent to the median filter 15, and the median filter 15 performs a process of replacing the extracted number "9" portion with complementary information. As an example, for eight pixels surrounding a pixel to be complemented, the median value of each density of these eight pixels (corresponding to the density of the fourth or fifth pixel when the surrounding eight pixels are arranged in density order) is obtained. , A complementing process is performed using the median value. As a result, the date image portion is fused with the surrounding image, and an image from which the date has been removed is obtained.

The image information processed by the median filter 15 is sent to the CPU 16 where the image information from the median filter 15 and the image information from the RAM 12 are synthesized. Specifically, the median filter 15
The image information inside the dotted line in FIG. 4 and the image information outside the dotted line in FIG. 4 are added together.

An MO disk drive 18 is connected to the CPU 16 via a drive interface circuit 17 so that image information and date information generated by a character recognition circuit are recorded on the MO disk.

FIG. 2 shows that when image information and date information are recorded on an MO disk, the images are grouped and recorded according to a date, that is, a photographing date.

In FIG. 2, the photographing date recognized by the character recognition circuit 14 is October 1, 1998 for the image 1, and
, November 3, 1998, and November 25, 1998 for Image 4, indicating that no date information was obtained for Image 2. In this case, since the photographing date of the images 3 and 4 is November, they are included in one group. Since the photographing date of the image 2 is not known, the group is the same as the group of the previous image 1.

FIG. 3 shows a directory structure when grouped and recorded on an MO disk. That is,
For the root directory, 199810 (1998
The image 1 and the image 2 belong to a directory named “October, 1998”, and the image 3 and the image 4 belong to a directory named 199811 (November, 1998).

Next, the operation of the present embodiment will be described with reference to the flowcharts shown in FIGS.

When the operation is started (S1), the film scanner 20 shown in FIG. 1 is continuously scanned to sequentially read the images recorded on the silver halide film (S2).
The read image data of all frames is transferred to the RAM 12 via the interface circuit 11 (S3).

Next, from the image data transferred to the RAM 12, one frame of image data is transferred to the date extracting circuit 13 (S4). The date extracting circuit 13 extracts a date image, that is, a character image, from the transferred image data of one frame (S5). In this case, the character image is extracted from the four corner areas shown in FIG.

If the date image cannot be extracted by the date extracting circuit 13, that is, if the date does not exist or the date cannot be read (S6), the image data is stored in the RAM1.
2 to the CPU 16 (S7), and determines the shooting date (shooting month) from the date of the previous frame (S8). That is, regarding the image 2 in FIG. 2, October 1998 is determined to be the shooting month.

When the date image is extracted by the date extracting circuit 13 (S6), the character recognizing circuit 14 converts the date image into a character code (S9). Character recognition circuit 14
If the date image can be converted to the character code by (S1
0), the extracted date image portion is converted to a median filter 1
5 (S11), and if the date image could not be converted to a character code, the process proceeds to step S7. The processing in the median filter 15 is as described above.

The image data processed by the median filter is transferred from the median filter 15 to the CPU 16 (S12). The CPU 16 combines the image data transferred from the median filter 15 with the image data transferred from the RAM 12, and outputs a 1
Image data for the frame is created (S13). The photographing date of the synthesized image data is determined from the character code converted by the character recognition circuit 14 (S14).

Next, the recording directory is determined from the date determined in step S8 or S14 (S15).
If the recording directory already exists, ie, FIG.
If directories such as “199810” and “199811” already exist (S16), M
Data (image data and date data) is recorded in the corresponding directory of the O disk (S17). If there is no recording directory, the directory (for example, “199
812 ") is newly created (S18), and data is recorded (S17).

When the recording of the data of all the frames is completed in this way (S19), the processing is terminated (S2).
0) If the recording of the data of all the frames has not been completed, the process returns to step S4, and the same processing as described above is performed for the next frame.

Although the embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiment.
Various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention.

[0031]

According to the present invention, it is possible to obtain an image from which a date or the like has been removed from a captured image by replacing the character image information portion with the complementary information.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration example of an image processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing that images are grouped according to shooting dates when recording image information and date information.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a directory structure when recording on a recording disk.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing that date information is extracted from four corner regions of an image region.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing an operation according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing an operation according to the embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 ... Image processing apparatus 11 ... Interface circuit 12 ... RAM 13 ... Date extraction circuit 14 ... Character recognition circuit 15 ... Median filter 16 ... CPU 17 ... Drive interface circuit 18 ... MO disk drive 20 ... Film scanner

Claims (3)

[Claims] An input unit for inputting image information of an image to which a character image is added; a character image extracting unit for extracting character image information relating to a character image from the image information input by the input unit; A processing unit for replacing a portion of the character image information extracted by the image extracting unit with complementary information. 2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the character image information extracted by said character image extracting means is date information. 3. A character recognizing means for generating character information from the character image information extracted by the character image extracting means, and recording the character information generated by the character recognizing means together with the image information obtained by the processing means. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a recording unit that performs the recording.