JP2001146039A - Image forming apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To form a good image on a recording medium by processing image data efficiently. SOLUTION: A font visibility enhancing method determining part 34 determines the use of hint data, the presence of line thikening processing and the presence of color conversion procesing with respect to a received character in order to enhance visibility at a time of printing output. When the use of the hint data is determined, a True Type rasterizing part 36 takes in hint data and outline data from a True Type data storing ROM region to perform rasterization on the basis of the hint data and outline data. When the non-use of the hint data is determined, the True Type rasterizing part 36 takes in only the outline data to perform rasterization only on the basis of the outline data. A line thickening processing part 40 and a font color conversion processing part 44 perform processing in the same way on the basis of the determination in the font visibility enhancing method determining part 34.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to reducing characters and graphics data when printing on a recording medium based on image data, creating an image, and generating the result. The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that prints out.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when printing on a recording medium based on image data, original characters, graphics line widths, and character colors are used in accordance with a designated page scale and character size. Is enlarged or reduced and rasterized for output. For example, when 4 up is specified at the time of printing, a character of 12 pt is rasterized as a character of 6 pt and output. At this time, if the characters after the reduction are minute, the printed lines are thin and difficult to see, or the inconvenience that the lines are interrupted occurs.
Similar inconveniences occur when the graphics line width becomes fine after the reduction. Therefore, the so-called Tru
When an eType font is used, "hint information" is used as a correction program corresponding to each character when rasterizing. This "tip information"
Is information corresponding to each character, and is a program for rasterizing each character so as to avoid the above-described problems such as breaks in character lines.

[0003]

However, when characters are rasterized using hint information, the rasterization processing time is longer than when rasterizing without using hint information. Depending on the character size, a sufficiently clear image can be obtained by printing rasterized image data without using hint information. Therefore, it is not necessary to perform rasterization processing using hint information for all print processing.

When hint information is used, breaks in character lines are avoided in image data, but when the character line width is the minimum, the width is one dot. Depending on the printer engine, printed characters are thin. And the lines that make up the characters are interrupted. A similar problem also occurs regarding the line width of graphics. Furthermore, for colored characters, even if the characters are reduced, the same dither pattern is applied, so if the characters are originally lightly colored, they can be read at normal output, but at the time of reduction, the characters will be blurred and unreadable. there were.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and has as its object to provide an image forming apparatus which efficiently processes image data and forms a good image on a recording medium. .

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to solve the above-mentioned problem, the present invention provides a method for improving the visibility of a print result of image data based on the content of the print processing of the image data. A determination unit for determining whether or not to execute the processing, and a processing unit for executing the visibility improving process on the image data based on the determination by the determination unit are provided.

According to the present invention, the visibility improvement processing is executed only when it is determined that the visibility improvement processing is necessary based on the print processing contents of the image data, instead of always executing the visibility improvement processing. Data processing can be performed. Further, by executing the visibility improvement processing for improving the visibility of the print result with respect to the image data, it is possible to obtain a good print result.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the character line complementing process, when the image data is a character, the character line is complemented when the character size is larger than a predetermined size. Is not executed, and when the character size is smaller than the predetermined size, it may be determined that the character line complementing process is executed. According to the present invention, when the character size is larger than the predetermined size and a good print result can be obtained without performing the character line complementing process as the visibility improving process, the character line complementing process is performed. It is possible to speed up the printing process without using a printer.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, when the image data is a character, if the size of the character is larger than a predetermined size, the determining means performs a character bolding process for thickening the character. If the size of the character is smaller than the predetermined size without performing the process, it may be determined to execute the character bolding process for making the character thicker. When the size of the character is smaller than the predetermined size, the printed character line is considered to be thin and difficult to see. However, according to the present invention, the character line is made thicker so that the visibility is improved as the visibility is improved. Since the character thickening process is performed, a good print result with improved visibility can be obtained.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, when the image data is a character, the determining means determines whether the character size is larger than a predetermined size or the color designation value is larger than a predetermined value. Does not execute the character color conversion process for darkening the character color, the size of the character is smaller than a predetermined size,
If the color designation value is lighter than a predetermined value, it may be determined to execute a character color conversion process for darkening the character color. If the size of the character is smaller than the predetermined size and the color specification value is thinner than the predetermined value, the printed character is blurred and hard to see, but according to the present invention, the color of the character is increased. Since the character color conversion process is performed as the visibility improvement process for improving visibility, a good print result with improved character visibility can be obtained.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, when the image data is graphics, the graphic thick line increases the graphics line width when the graphics line width is larger than a predetermined width. If the graphics line width is thinner than a predetermined width without performing the conversion process, the determination may be made as follows. When the graphics line width is smaller than a predetermined width, printed graphics are difficult to see. However, according to the present invention, graphics thickening processing as visibility improvement processing for increasing the graphics line width to make it easier to see. Is performed, the line width of the graphics can be increased, and a good print result with improved visibility can be obtained.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, when the image data is graphics, the determining means determines whether the line width of the graphics is larger than a predetermined width or the specified color value is larger than a predetermined value. Does not perform graphics color conversion processing to make the graphics color darker, and if the line width of the graphics is thinner than the predetermined width and the color specification value is smaller than the predetermined value, the graphics color conversion processing to make the graphics color deeper Can also be performed. If the graphics line width is smaller than the predetermined width and the color specification value is smaller than the predetermined value, the printed graphics are blurred and difficult to see, but according to the present invention, the graphics colors are darkened. Since the graphics color conversion process is performed as a visibility improvement process for making the image more visible, a good print result with improved graphics visibility can be obtained.

[0013]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS [First Embodiment] An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

The image forming apparatus 28 according to the present embodiment
As shown in FIG. 1, a toner unit 10 having four color toners of cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K), and a scanning unit that scans a drum unit with a laser based on image data Unit 12, a drum unit 14 on which an electrostatic band image is formed by the scanning unit 12, a belt intermediate transfer body 16 receiving an image transferred from the drum unit 14, a roller 22 for transporting the paper 20, and a toner on the paper. And a fixing unit 24 for fixing.

Next, the configuration of a part of the control unit of the image forming apparatus according to the present embodiment will be described.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the control unit 46 installed in the image forming apparatus 28 for executing the font visibility improvement processing. The font instructing unit 32 is connected to the host computer 30 and the font visibility improving method determining unit 34. The font visibility improving method determining unit 34 is connected to the TrueType rasterizing unit 36, and the TrueType rasterizing unit 36 is connected to the TrueType rasterizing unit 36.
It is connected to the eType data storage ROM area 38 and the thick line processing section 40. The TrueType rasterizing unit 36 is divided into a hint information using unit 36A for performing rasterization using hint information, and a hint information non-using unit 36B for performing rasterization without using hint information. The thick line processing unit 40 is connected to the font cache storage unit 42, and the font cache storage unit 42 is connected to the font color conversion processing unit 44.

Next, the operation according to the present embodiment will be described.
This will be described with reference to FIG. When print data on characters is transmitted from the host computer, the font visibility improving process shown in FIG. 5 starts.

In step 60, the font instruction unit 32
The data from the host computer 30 is received, and in step 62, a hint information use flag H as an instruction flag as to whether or not to use hint information, and a thick line as an instruction flag as to whether or not to perform the thickening process. The initialization flag F is initialized (H → 0, F → 0). In step 64, the font designating unit 32 determines, based on the data from the host computer 30, the charC
The mode, size, and color are transmitted to the font visibility improvement method determination unit 34. The font visibility improvement method determination unit 34 determines the charCode, siz of the received character.
For e and color, the use of hint information, bolding processing, and the presence or absence of color conversion processing are determined to improve the visibility at the time of print output.

First, it is determined whether or not to use hint information based on the font size of a character. The hint information is information corresponding to each character as described above, and is a program for rasterizing so as to avoid breaks in character lines due to character reduction. For example, in FIG.
An image in the case of printing “A” 50 by reducing the “A” character of Hiragana is shown. The part 52 that constitutes a part of “A” 50 is based only on outline information without using hint information. However, when the rasterizing process is performed, a part of the line is interrupted as shown in FIG. However, when rasterization processing is performed based on the hint information and the outline information using the hint information, a part of the line
Rasterization is performed without interruption as shown in FIG.

In the present embodiment, the character font siz
If e is less than 10 pt, hint information is used, and the hint information use flag is turned ON. The reason why the hint information is not always used is that the use of the hint information slows down the TrueType rasterization process. If the font size of the character is large, the hint information can be used to visually recognize the printout. This has little effect on the character, and if the font size of the character is equal to or more than a certain value, priority is given to speeding up the rasterizing process without using hint information. Therefore, in step 66, it is determined whether or not the font size of the character is less than 10 pt. If it is less than 10 pt, the hint information use flag H is set to 1 in step 68.

Next, it is determined whether or not to perform the thick line processing based on the character font size. Here, the thickening process means a process of increasing the line width of a character to be printed. This bolding process is performed when the font size of the character becomes smaller than a certain value, and when the character to be printed becomes thin or the line is cut off depending on the printer engine, a good print result cannot be obtained. Because there is. For example, when printing the number “1”, FIG.
As shown in FIG. 4A, in the case of a character that has been subjected to a rasterization process with a width of one dot, the character to be printed may become thin or the line may be interrupted. Process it.

In this embodiment, the character font siz
If e is less than 6 pt, thick line processing is performed,
Turn on the thick line processing flag. Therefore, step 70
Then, it is determined whether or not the font size of the character is less than 6 pt. If it is less than 6 pt, the thickening flag F is set to 1 in step 72.

If it is determined in step 66 that the font size of the character is 10 pt or more, if it is determined in step 70 that the font size of the character is 6 pt or more, and after the process of step 72, the process proceeds to step 74.
Then, the color designation value is determined. The color designation value is determined based on the font size and color of the original character. For example, the font size of the character is 5 pt and the color is G
If it is rayscale 200 (0 (black) to 255 (white)), the color designation value of the character is set to Grayscale 17
0 and the original color is Grayscale 160 (0
(Black) to 255 (white)), the data is maintained as it is without changing the designated color value. Here, the color specification value is changed when the character is reduced,
If or is a light color, there is a disadvantage that the characters printed and printed are light and blurred, which makes it difficult to read.
If color is equal to or less than a certain value, a change condition is determined in advance, and a color designation value at the time of print output is determined based on this condition.

In step 76, the hint information use flag H
Is determined to be 1, and if it is 1, use of hint information is necessary. In step 78, the TrueType rasterizing unit 36 fetches the hint information and the outline information from the TrueType data storage ROM area, and
In step 80, rasterization is performed based on the hint information and the outline information. In step 76, if the hint information use flag H is 0, the use of hint information is unnecessary. In step 82, the TrueType rasterizing unit 36 fetches only outline information from the TrueType data storage ROM area, and in step 84, Rasterize only based on outline information.

At step 86, the thick line processing flag F is set to 1
It is determined whether or not it is 1. If it is 1, thickening processing is necessary, so in step 88 the thickening processing unit 40 performs thickening processing, and proceeds to step 90. In step 86, if the thick line processing information use flag F is 0, the thick line processing is unnecessary, and the process proceeds to step 90 without passing through step 88.

In step 90, the font cache storage unit 42 stores the above-mentioned binarized data, and sequentially transmits the data to the font color conversion processing unit 44. In step 92, the font color conversion processing unit 44 performs data processing so as to convert the color into the determined color designation value, and in step 9
In step 4, this data is output to the printer driver, and the process ends.

According to the present embodiment, it is determined whether or not to use hint information, and if the font size of a character is larger than a certain value, rasterization is performed without using hint information. Can be planned. If the font size of the character is smaller than a certain value, hint information is used to avoid breaks in the character line, so that an appropriate print output can be obtained. If the line width of the characters to be printed is equal to or less than a certain value, a thick line processing is performed to increase the line width of the characters, so that the characters to be printed are prevented from becoming thin or the lines being cut off. And good printing results can be obtained. Further, when the font size and color of the character are equal to or smaller than a certain value, the color is changed to a darker color so that the visibility of the printed character is improved, so that the blur of the printed character is prevented. And visibility can be improved.

The criterion for determining whether or not to use hint information, the criterion for determining whether or not to use thick line processing, and the font color conversion processing conditions described in the present embodiment are merely examples. It can be changed according to the preference of the visibility.

Further, in the present embodiment, the font visibility improvement processing is performed by judging whether or not hint information is used, whether or not bold processing is performed, and font color conversion processing. At least one of them
One of them can be determined and executed as font visibility improvement processing.

[Second Embodiment] In the second embodiment, the description of the same parts as in the first embodiment will be omitted, and only different parts will be described.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a part of a control unit that executes a line visibility improving process mounted inside the image forming apparatus 28. The graphics instructing unit 100 is connected to the host computer 30 and the font line visibility improving method determining unit 102, and the line visibility improving method determining unit 102 is connected to the line width changing unit 104, and the line width changing unit 104 , And a memory storage unit 106, and the memory storage unit 106 is connected to a graphics color conversion processing unit 108.

Next, the operation according to the present embodiment will be described.
This will be described with reference to FIG. When print data on graphics is transmitted from the host computer, the font visibility improvement processing shown in FIG. 5 starts.

At step 110, graphics instructing section 1
00 receives the data from the host computer 30, and in step 112, initializes (L → 0) a line width conversion processing flag S as an instruction flag as to whether or not to perform the line width conversion processing. In step 114, the graphics instruction unit 114 transmits the width and color of the line to be output to the line visibility improvement method determination unit 102 based on the data from the host computer 30. In the line visibility improvement method determination unit 102, the width and color of the received line
Regarding r, the presence or absence of line width conversion processing and color conversion processing is determined in order to improve the visibility at the time of print output.

First, it is determined whether or not to perform the line width conversion processing based on the width of the line. Here, the line width conversion processing refers to performing processing of converting the line width of graphics to be printed. This line width conversion processing is performed when the width of the graphics falls below a certain value.
This is because, depending on the printer engine, there is a case where a printed print becomes thin and a line is interrupted, so that a good print result cannot be obtained. For example, when a line as shown in FIG. 7 is printed, as shown in FIG.
In the case of a line having a dot width, the graphics to be printed may be thin or the line may be interrupted. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 7B, the line width is converted to a three-dot width.

In this embodiment, if the graphics line width is 2 dots or less, the line conversion processing is performed.
Turn on the line conversion processing flag. Therefore, step 11
In step 6, it is determined whether the line width of the graphics is less than 2 lines. If the line width is less than 2 lines, the line conversion processing flag L is set to 1 in step 118.

Next, it is determined whether or not there is conversion of the designated color value. The color specification value is the line width of the original graphics and c
Determined based on color. For example, the line width of graphics is 2 lines and the color is Grayscale 200 (0
(Black) to 255 (white)), the color designation value of the character is changed to Grayscale 170, and Grayscale 170 is changed.
If le 150 (0 (black) to 255 (white)), the data is maintained without conversion. The reason why the color specification value is changed here is that when graphics are reduced, if the originally specified color is a light color, there is an inconvenience that printed graphics are light and blurred. Graphics line width and col
If or is equal to or less than a certain value, a change condition is determined in advance, and a color designation value for print output is determined based on this condition.

At step 122, the line width conversion processing flag L
Is determined to be 1, and if it is 1, the line width processing is necessary. Therefore, in step 124, the line width conversion unit 104 performs the line width conversion processing, and proceeds to step 126. At step 122,
If the line width conversion processing flag L is 0, the line width conversion processing is unnecessary, and the process proceeds to step 126 without passing through step 124.

At step 126, the memory storage unit 106
Stores the binarized data, and sequentially transmits the data to the graphics color conversion processing unit 108. In step 128, the graphics color conversion processing unit 108 performs data processing so as to convert the color into the determined color designation value. In step 130, this data is output to the printer driver, and this processing ends.

According to the present embodiment, when the line width of graphics becomes thinner than a certain value, line width conversion processing for increasing the line width of graphics is performed, so that blurring or interruption of graphics lines is prevented. As a result, a printed output with good visibility can be obtained. Also, when the line width of graphics is thinner than a certain value, the color is changed to a dark color so that the visibility of the printed graphics is improved,
Blurring and the like of the printed graphics can be prevented, and the visibility can be improved.

The criterion for judging the presence / absence of line conversion processing and the graphics color conversion processing conditions described in the present embodiment are merely examples, and each criterion and condition may be changed in accordance with the characteristics of the printer engine, the preference of visibility, and the like. It is possible to

In the present embodiment, the graphics visibility improvement processing is performed by determining both the presence / absence of the line width conversion processing and the graphics color conversion processing. At least one of these visibility improvement conditions is set. Judgment can be performed as graphics visibility improvement processing. Further, the presence / absence of use of hint information, presence / absence of bold line processing, and font color conversion processing described in the first embodiment, and presence / absence of line width conversion processing and graphics color conversion processing shown in the present embodiment. At least one of the above may also be implemented.

[0042]

As described above, according to the present invention,
The visibility improvement process is not always performed, but is performed only when it is determined necessary based on the content of the print process of the image data. Therefore, the image data can be efficiently processed. In addition, by executing the visibility improvement processing for improving the visibility of the print result on the image data, a good print result can be obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an image forming apparatus according to an embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a system configuration according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is an enlarged view of a part of an image obtained by binarizing Hiragana “A”.

FIGS. 4A and 4B are a diagram (A) before the thickening process and a diagram (B) after the thickening process of the image obtained by binarizing the numeral “1”.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a font visibility improving process.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a system configuration according to a second embodiment.

FIG. 7A is a diagram before the line width conversion processing of a binary image of the graphics image, and FIG. 7B is a view after the line width conversion processing.
It is.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart illustrating graphics visibility improvement processing.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 10 Toner unit 12 Scanning part 14 Drum unit 16 Belt intermediate transfer body 18 Paper tray 20 Paper 22 Roller 24 Fixing unit 26 Ejection port 38 Printer controller 30 Host computer 32 Font instruction part 34 Font visibility improvement method determination part (determination means) 36 TrueType Last rise section (processing means) 36 TrueType data storage ROM area 40 Thickening processing section (processing means) 42 Font cache storage section 44 Font color conversion processing section (processing means) 100 Graphics instruction section 102 Line visibility improvement method determination section ( Determination unit) 104 line conversion unit (processing unit) 106 memory storage unit 108 graphics color conversion processing unit (processing unit)

Claims (6)

[Claims] A determining unit that determines whether or not to execute a visibility improvement process for improving the visibility of a print result on the image data based on a print processing content of the image data; Processing means for performing the visibility improvement processing on the image data based on the determination by the means. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determining unit does not execute a character line complementing process for complementing a character line when the image data is a character and the character size is larger than a predetermined size. 2. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the size is smaller than the predetermined size, the character line complementing process is determined to be executed. 3. When the image data is a character, if the character size is larger than a predetermined size, the determining means does not execute a character bolding process for making the character thicker. 2. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the size of the character is smaller than the size of the character, the character thickening process is performed to make the character thicker. 4. A character color for darkening a character color when the size of the character is larger than a predetermined size when the image data is a character, or when the color designation value is larger than a predetermined value. When the character size is smaller than the predetermined size and the color designation value is lighter than the predetermined value without performing the conversion process, the character color conversion process for darkening the character color is determined. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1. 5. When the image data is graphics, the graphics thickening processing is not performed to increase the graphics line width when the graphics line width is larger than a predetermined width. 2. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the width is smaller than a predetermined width, the graphics thickening processing is executed to increase the line width of the graphics. 6. The graphics color for increasing the color of graphics when the image data is graphics, if the line width of graphics is larger than a predetermined width, or if the specified color value is larger than a predetermined value. If the conversion processing is not performed and the line width of the graphics is smaller than the predetermined width and the color designation value is smaller than the predetermined value, the graphics color conversion processing for darkening the graphics color is determined to be performed. The image forming apparatus according to claim 1.