JP3021159B2 - Image processing apparatus and method - Google Patents

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,
In particular, for example, the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus having a printer unit capable of full color output.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when a screen hard copy of an engineering workstation (hereinafter abbreviated as EWS) is output to a printer, the display color of the printer is a bitmap display (hereinafter abbreviated as a display device) of the EWS.
Is limited by the number of display gradations (the number of planes).

Here, a case is considered in which a printer has an output function in full color (8 bits for each of RGB) and the number of display gradations of an EWS bit map display is 8 bits (256 gradations). The EWS is usually equipped with a multi-window system, and various applications are displayed on a screen in the form of a plurality of windows. In such an EWS, even if the application has a function of logically displaying a full-color image, the EWS
Since the display cannot be performed with the number of gradations as it is due to the limitation of the hardware of the S display device, for example, after performing bit compression to 256 gradations or less using a bit compression method such as a dither method, the image is displayed as a window on the display device. I do. Thereafter, when a hard copy of the screen is output to the printer, the window portion of the image, which should have been displayed in full color, is bit-compressed and output.

On the other hand, when an image is printed out in the original number of gradations, that is, in full color, a full-color image alone is printed out separately from a hard copy of a screen, or
The only option is to output the EWS in the form of a screen hard copy at the number of gradations of EWS together with other applications other than the image displayed on the display device.

However, in the above-mentioned conventional example, it is necessary to make a hard copy at the original gradation number of the original image while coexisting the image window which is originally full color and is displayed in a compressed state and the application window other than the full color image. In addition, it is necessary to temporarily capture the hard copy data of the screen and the data of the full-color image into the buffer area and explicitly combine them, which is a complicated operation for the operator.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned prior art, and is capable of taking in an original image of an image with a fine gradation expression, synthesizing another image with a coarse gradation expression, and outputting it at the same time. It is an object to provide an image processing device.

[0007]

To achieve the above object, an image processing apparatus according to the present invention has the following arrangement.

An image processing apparatus having a printer capable of outputting color image data to a recording medium at a high gradation and a display unit capable of outputting color image data at a relatively low gradation. A display means for simultaneously displaying image data having a high gradation and data other than an image having a relatively low gradation as compared with the image data on the display unit; and displaying the image data with a high gradation. Storage means for storing while holding, display control means for controlling the display of each of the image data and the data other than the image, and simultaneously the image data and the data other than the image displayed on the display means When printing on the printing unit, read out the image data from the storage means,
The image processing apparatus further includes a print control unit that performs control to replace a displayed part of the image data with image data having an original high gradation and control printing by combining with data other than the image.

With the above arrangement, the present invention reads out image data having a high gradation from the storage means and lowers the gradation when the image data displayed with the gradation lowered on the display unit is printed on the printing unit. Provided is an image processing apparatus that operates to replace displayed image data and print simultaneously with data other than the image displayed on a display unit.

A structure for achieving the other object of the present invention comprises the following structure. In an image processing apparatus including a printer unit capable of outputting color image data on a recording medium with a high gradation and a display unit capable of outputting color image data with a relatively low gradation, A display step of simultaneously displaying image data having a gradation and other data having a gradation relatively lower than the image data on the display unit, and storing the image data with a high gradation. When printing the image data and the other data displayed on the display means simultaneously on the printing unit, read the image data from the storage means and display a portion of the displayed image data. A print control step of replacing the image data with the original image data having a high gradation, and controlling the image data to be printed by combining with data other than the image. And an image processing method comprising Rukoto.

[0011]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an image processing apparatus which is a typical embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 1 denotes a main storage device which stores a user program, a management program, and a window program of the processing process shown in FIG. 2-5 and stores data.

Reference numeral 2 denotes a processor (hereinafter referred to as a CPU) that performs processing and control, executes a processing process stored in the main storage device 1, and processes data in the main storage device 1 or other devices.

Reference numeral 3 denotes a hard disk device of the external storage device, which stores processing processes and data (image data and data different from the image data).

The bit map display 4 displays image data and data different from the image data.

Reference numeral 5 denotes a display control unit having a bitmap memory, and the contents of the bitmap memory are displayed on a bitmap display 4.

Reference numeral 6 denotes a printer control unit which controls printing of image data and other data by the color printer 8.

Reference numeral 7 denotes a memory for holding an image to be output to the color printer 8.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the relationship between the processing processes executed by the image processing apparatus of this embodiment. As shown in FIG. 2, in the CPU 2, a management program is started and a client process 21 for requesting image display and output to a printer, a process 22 for image display management, and a multi-window display for a bitmap display 4 (hereinafter referred to as a display device). Is executed. When outputting an image to a full-color printer 8 (hereinafter referred to as a printer), the data is transferred to an image memory 7 for saving an image to be output from the printer, and then a printout request is issued to the printer controller 6 to output image data. I do. When displaying an image on the display device 4, the display is performed by issuing a display request to the window process 23. Note that the window process used in the present embodiment is assumed to be a window system realized in the form of a process, for example, an X window system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A window system incorporated in the operating system may be used.

Next, the operation of the image management process of this embodiment will be described with reference to the flowcharts shown in FIGS.

First, when the image management process 22 is started by the CPU 2, first in step S31, an image management table 40 formed in the main storage device 1 as shown in FIG.
Is initialized. The entries in the image management table 40 include
Entry number 41, window identifier 42, display device 4
, Display position origin coordinates 43 and window size 44,
There are a file name 45 of the original image and a gradation number 46. Next, in step S32, a request issued from the client process 21 is received. In step S33, processing is performed according to the type of the received request. In step S34,
The CPU 2 determines whether the management process 22 is to wait for an event to continue processing or to terminate the management process itself. Here, if the process is to be continued, the process returns to step S32 again, and enters a request event waiting state. On the other hand, if the management process has ended, the process ends. In this embodiment, the types of requests include a display request and a print request. However, other types of requests may be used.

Next, consider a case where the request issued by the client process 21 is an image display request to the display device 4. Here, it is assumed that the display request specifies the image data file name and the display position starting point on the display device 4. In this case, the details of the request process executed in step S33 are shown in FIG.

First, in step S41, it is confirmed that the request event is a display request, and the process proceeds to step S41, where the original image data is read from the hard disk device 3 based on the image data file name included in the display request. It is assumed that the original image data is stored in the hard disk device 3 in a format as shown in FIG. 8, for example. In step S43, the image bit depth read from the data file (= 2 to the nth power becomes the gradation number of the image when n = n) is checked. In step S44, the display bit number is checked. The maximum number of display bits is the number of bits (referred to as Dmax) due to the maximum displayable color provided by the window system. However, in general, a plurality of images are displayed or other applications are displayed on the same screen. In most cases, color resources (color maps) are stored in Dma
No assignment is made to only one image display up to x bits. Therefore, the number of bits actually displayed is d
If it is a bit, d ≦ Dmax. The maximum displayable bit number Dmax of the window system can be obtained by inquiring of the window process shown in FIG. 2-23. Also, regarding the number of bits d actually displayed,
An inquiry may be made to the management process diagram 2-22. A management mechanism is required for the bit number d in the management process diagram 2-22, but an existing method may be used. In step S45, the display bit number is compared with the bit number of the original image data, and if the bit number of the image data is large, step S46.
Performs image data compression.

For example, if the original image data is 8 bits for each of RGB and the number of gradations of the bit map display is 256 (8 bits), the image is 64 gradations (6 bits).
Compression to 128 gradations (7 bits) or the like. As a method of compressing an image, a color dither method, a pino mapping method, and the like are known, but here, image compression is performed by an existing compression method, and a description thereof will be omitted.

In step S47, a display request is issued to the window process 23 using the compressed image data, and the display is performed on the display device 4. In the present embodiment, since identifiers are added to all windows based on the image management table 40 shown in FIG. 6 and managed, the window process 23 returns one corresponding window identifier to the management program when a window is displayed. . In response, in step S45, the window identifier and the image file name,
After registering the number of tones of the original image in the image management table 40 of FIG. 6, the process returns to step S33.

FIG. 7 shows the display device 4 displaying three corresponding image windows when three window information are set in the image management table 40 as shown in FIG. 6 based on the process described above. It is an example of a screen.

In FIG. 7, image windows 52 to 5 corresponding to the entry numbers 1 to 3 of the event requesting step 41 of FIG.
4 is displayed. Each of the image windows 52 to 54 has (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (x3,
y3), and their sizes are (w1, h1), (w
2, h2) and (w3, h3). The value of the entry number 41 indicates the vertical relationship of the windows. The higher the number, the higher the value. Therefore, when the image windows 52 and 53 overlap as shown in FIG.
Is hidden in a part of the image window 52 having a small value. When the display state of the image window changes, an event occurs from the window process 23 to the management process 22, so that the value of the entry number 41 of the image management table 40 is rewritten. Rewriting is performed by the management process. In FIG. 7, a normal window 55 is displayed in addition to the image window. Any number of image windows and normal windows may exist as long as they do not exceed the limit of the window system.

Next, consider a case where the request issued by the client process 21 is a print request to the printer 8. In this case, the details of the request process executed in step S33 are shown in FIG.

First, in step S51, it is confirmed that the request event is a print request, and the process proceeds to step S52, where a screen dump of the display device 4 is created by an existing hard copy method. Next, in step S53, window information is requested to the window process 23, and the image management table 40 is updated based on the obtained information. In step S54, the image data of the file name 45 of the original image is stored on the hard disk in an area defined by the display position starting point coordinates 43 and the wind size 44 corresponding to the window identifier 42 in the image management table 40 corresponding to the screen dump data. A predetermined area of the main storage device 1 is read from the device 3 and directly combined with screen dump data as an uncompressed image. At this time, the screen dump data is decompressed and converted to 8 bits each for RGB.

In step S55, the synthesized image data is transferred to the image memory 7, and in step S56, a printout request is issued to the printer control unit 6 to be printed out from the printer 8.

According to this embodiment, a process for managing the original image data file of the image bit-compressed and displayed on the bit map display, the display position and size of the image window, the number of tones of the original image, and the like is provided. By
While making the image window coexist with the window displaying the application other than the full-color image, it is possible to simultaneously and automatically obtain a hard copy with the number of gradations of the original image.

In this embodiment, the original image data is assumed to be 8 bits for each of RGB. However, the original image data may have a different number of bits and a different color system (such as CMY system). It may be a single gradation image.

In this embodiment, the description has been made on the assumption that the image management program is configured as a process. However, for example, the image management program is incorporated in a window system, or in an operating system. It may be incorporated.

[0034]

As described above, according to the present invention, an original image of an image with a fine gradation expression can be taken in, combined with another image with a coarse gradation expression and output at the same time. It has the effect of being released from work.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a typical embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the relationship between each process of image management.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart illustrating an outline of an image management process.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an image display request process.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a print request process.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a structure of an image management table.

7 is a diagram showing a display example of an image window screen corresponding to the information shown in FIG. 6 set in the image management table.

FIG. 8 is a view showing an image file format.

[Explanation of symbols]

 8 Full-color printer 22 Image management process 40 Image management table 52-54 Image window

──────────────────────────────────────────────────の Continued on the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ identification code FI H04N 1/407 B41J 3/00 A (58) Field surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) G06T 1/00 B41J 2 / 52 G06F 3/153 340 G06T 5/00 G09G 5/02 H04N 1/407

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] 1. An image comprising: a printer unit capable of outputting image data on a recording medium at a high gradation in color; and a display unit capable of outputting color image data at a relatively low gradation. In the processing device, display means for simultaneously displaying image data having a high gradation and data other than an image having a relatively low gradation as compared with the image data on the display unit; and When the image data and the data other than the image are simultaneously printed on the printing unit, the image data is read from the storage unit, and the displayed image data portion is used as image data having an original high gradation. Print control means for controlling replacement and combining with data other than the image and printing; and the display means comprises a maximum displayable floor which can be displayed by the display unit. When displaying image data having a high number of tones exceeding the number of tones, the image data of the image data is reduced to the number of tones less than the maximum displayable number of gradations based on the color information used by the already displayed image. An image processing apparatus, comprising: means for displaying with a reduced number of gradations. 2. An image comprising a printer unit capable of outputting color image data to a recording medium at a high gradation and a display unit capable of outputting color image data at a relatively low gradation. A display step of simultaneously displaying, on the display unit, image data having a high gradation and other data having a relatively low gradation as compared with the image data; and Storing the image data and the other data displayed on the display means at the same time printing on the printing unit,
A print control step of reading image data from the storage unit, replacing the displayed image data portion with image data having an original high gradation, and controlling to print by combining with data other than the image. An image processing method comprising: