JP4810262B2 - Image processing system - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to an image processing system that performs business processing, filing, and the like by using a document / slip image captured by an image input device such as a scanner / digital camera. In addition, the present invention relates to an image processing system that can reliably execute a document scanning operation.

In general, when a document is scanned and processed as an image file for slip processing or the like, scanning may not be performed correctly (in a state where necessary characters can be read) depending on the density of the document. In order to prevent this from happening, it is often necessary to perform extra work such as checking the scanned image and rescanning while adjusting the density as necessary.
In particular, considering database capacity, media capacity, etc., scan and save processing is often performed as a monochrome binary image. In such a case, depending on the manuscript, a phenomenon that characters cannot be read at all occurs and the influence is large. Become. For this reason, it is essential to confirm whether or not scanning has been performed correctly at the time of scanning.
In order to solve this problem, the density and scan position have been confirmed in advance by low-resolution scanning using a preview, or scanned products such as products of “IntelliScan” Ricoh Software Co., Ltd. There was a way to check and correct on site.

  As a prior art, as disclosed in Patent Document 1, an image is read from an image input device only once in response to an image request from an instruction input device or an application, and stored in an original image data storage unit. Parameters such as density, brightness, color tone, color / monochrome, resolution, reading range, image tilt / distortion, paper orientation, etc. are processed and adjusted by the image processing engine as required by the original image data storage unit. Is matched to the required conditions, and processing / adjustment is not performed directly on the image, but is performed on the image pallet information in the data storage unit, and the parameter adjusted once is stored, so that the parameters after the next time are stored. A technique for omitting adjustment is disclosed.

In Patent Document 2, in a save preview method for saving an image in the Lossy compression format and displaying the image, only a predetermined area specified by the original image storage unit or specified by the user is cut out and stored by the cutout control unit. The cut-out image of the display part is stored in the part, the sampled cut-out image is stored in the storage part, only a part of the displayed image is compressed and expanded by the compression / decompression control part, and compressed and expanded by the display control part. The image is displayed on the screen, the compressed size of the entire image is estimated based on the compressed size of only a part of the image displayed by the cropping control unit, and the estimated compressed size is displayed on the display screen at the same time. A technique that enables rate confirmation is disclosed.
JP 2002-044317 A JP 2004-215069 A

However, the above conventional method inevitably causes an operation of displaying and confirming an image at the time of scanning. The only work that is originally desired is to scan and save the original, and the operations of checking the scanned image, adjusting the density, and rescanning are extra work that is not the original purpose.
Therefore, this rescan is the most labor-intensive work, and there is a problem that it becomes an inefficient work of repeating trial and error until an appropriate image is obtained.
Although the confirmation work itself is not so troublesome, a confirmation screen and operation buttons for density adjustment must be prepared. For example, when there are 100 pages of a manuscript, it is likely to be a burden on the operator, such as requiring confirmation work 100 times and troublesome.

In general, image scanning depends on the content and density of a document, and it is often difficult to scan any document at a constant density. For example, there are cases in which characters on a document cannot be identified because the characters are faint and faint depending on the document, or the characters are too dark and the characters are crushed.
However, in such a case, it is generally very inefficient to perform density adjustment again and rescan. In particular, there is a high possibility of becoming a bottleneck when building a business flow via a network at a remote location.

For example, if a customer order form or payment slip obtained by a sales representative at each sales office or branch office is input with a scanner and is considered to be a system that aggregates and manages them at the head office, if the head office accounts Even if the person in charge finds a slip that is too thin to read during the counting process, the original manuscript is located at a remote branch, so the troublesome task such as finding the original manuscript from the slip number and sending it again Will occur.
In order to prevent this from happening, it is necessary to confirm whether the document is scanned correctly when the slip is scanned at each sales office or branch office. Although the work itself is simple, it is troublesome when the number of processed sheets is large, or when the worker is not familiar with the operation of the PC.

If a document with an inappropriate scan density is found during confirmation, the document is searched from the slip, and rescanning is repeated until the scan density is appropriate. For this reason, there are many factors that make the scan operation difficult to be a simple operation.
As described above, when a document having an inappropriate scan density is generated, the work is inevitably burdened by the operator.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described conventional problems, and an object of the present invention is to reduce the burden on an operator associated with a conventional scan input and to reliably execute a document scanning job. Is to provide a device.

To achieve the above object, an invention according to claim 1, and branch scanner for reading the image information of the document image, the headquarters server received via communication network image information read by said supporting store scanner, the A scanner control PC that performs reading control of the branch scanner and transmits the read image information to the head office server via a network communication network; a head office accounting processing PC that performs predetermined processing on the image information from the head office server ; The branch scanner includes image information reading means for reading multi-value image information to obtain multi-value image information, and the scanner control PC reads the image information reading means. Transmission means for transmitting the received multi-valued image information via the network communication network, and the head office server First storage means for storing the image information, storage control means for receiving the multi-value image information from the transmission means and storing the multi-value image information as it is in the first storage means, The head office accounting processing PC displays multi-value image information stored in the first storage means transmitted from the head office server and performs predetermined processing by the user to obtain binary image information. converts, when performing the predetermined processing, depending on the viewing result of the image information of the displayed multi-valued equipped with an image processing means for performing predetermined image adjustment, said storage control means, wherein Storage control is performed to store the binary image information converted by the image information processing means transmitted from the head office accounting processing PC in a second storage means.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, the predetermined image adjustment by the image information processing means is performed by extracting an original image at a display position or a position designated by the user according to a user operation, and adjusting brightness and gamma for a part of the image. correction, characterized in that an adjustment process to redisplay change the density of the image by changing parameters 2 Neka閾value.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the storage control in which the storage control means stores binary image information from the image information processing means in the second storage means, the image at an arbitrary position designated by the user. When the number of colors is different, it is characterized in that a single monochrome photo portion is mixed and stored in one page as a whole by storing in a format in which a plurality of images can be superimposed and stored, such as PDF. To do.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the storage control in which the storage control means stores binary image information from the image information processing means in the second storage means, the density at an arbitrary position designated by the user. When the image after the adjustment or the number of color changes is saved as a file, it is saved as a separate file.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, smoothing reduction such as bicubic or bilinear or monochrome-> grayscale reduction is performed instead of binarization / subtraction, in which predetermined image adjustment by the image information processing means is switched by a user. It is processing the image to the most visibility good condition when being displayed on the screen by performing small, optimum image brightness by the user's operation, gamma correction, change the color saturation, the readability of characters in the image It is an adjustment process for adjusting to a proper state.

  According to the present invention, the stored multi-value image information is displayed and converted into binary image information by performing a predetermined process by the user, and when the predetermined process is performed, the displayed multi-value image information is displayed. Since the predetermined image adjustment is performed according to the visual recognition result of the value image information, it is possible to reduce the burden on the operator associated with the conventional scan input and to reliably execute the document scanning operation.

  Further, according to the present invention, the state that is the greatest common divisor is calculated from the information for each user and the database is updated. On the other hand, an image that has not been accessed by any user can be converted into monochrome binarization, MRC, Since processing for suppressing image data according to system settings, such as resolution, is performed, processing for suppressing the data size of the database according to the display state of the user can be made common.

Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.
First, an outline of the present invention will be described before the embodiments of the present invention are described in detail with reference to the drawings.
In the present invention, no confirmation is performed at the time of scanning (input worker).
For example, after 100 originals are set in the ADF and the start button is pressed, it is possible to return to your seat and do other work. It is only necessary to perform the original work of scanning and saving or sending the slip to the user.
Instead, if the visibility of the document is poor when viewed by a user who uses the slip image (such as an accountant), density adjustment is performed at that point. Whether it is performed by a scanner input person or an accountant, it does not change the confirmation of the same image, but the meaning changes greatly. In other words, the scanner input person is not the original job, but the accounting staff originally checks the original image and checks whether there is a difference in processing contents.

Thus, it is a feature of the present invention that an image is displayed in the category of the original work, and density adjustment is performed as necessary at that time. Therefore, when scanning, full-color (or grayscale) scanning is performed and saved, and the user in charge of accounting, for example, automatically converts to black-and-white binary when it is displayed. A means of converting to an image state is taken.
In addition, in the case of a system where scanned images that have been input, such as filing, are stored and accumulated, but there are many documents that are not accessed by the user and are not used at all for a long time, this puts pressure on the database capacity. There is also the possibility of doing. Application examples in such cases were also considered.

Also, when there are multiple users and each seeks a different optimum state (for example, some people want to display and print in monochrome, others want to see in color, etc.) Considered embodiments are also proposed.
That is, according to the present invention, scanning is performed in color or gray scale at the time of scanning, and monochrome display / conversion is performed when an accounting person in the head office confirms the scan slip.

Normally, monochrome binary images are stored and managed in the head office database. This is to reduce the amount of data, and monochrome binary data is preferable in order to reduce the load on the scan & network. However, this causes the aforementioned problem.
Therefore, in the present invention, the data to be scanned and sent to the head office is a color or gray scale image. There are two reasons for this.
(1) Scanning with multiple values such as color / gray makes it possible to adjust the density when binarizing later.
(2) Scanning in color / gray makes it possible to scan at a density that cannot be detected by scanning in monochrome. For example, even when the character cannot be identified with human eyes at the time of the color scan image, it is possible to make the character appear by performing appropriate density adjustment and detection.

One concern is that scanning in color / gray and transmission results in the disadvantage of requiring a large amount of network traffic and temporary storage. However, the increase in the amount of data is not a big problem considering the advantages such as the above-described reduction of the burden on the worker, the reliable execution of processing, and the recent increase in network traffic capacity.
This is finally converted to monochrome binary. The timing of conversion is the time when the accounting staff at the head office confirms the scan slip. By binarizing at the point when confirmation is necessary, it eliminates the extra work, eliminates the generation of slips that cannot be read, and reduces the burden of database server capacity by binarizing as many as possible. It is.
Simultaneously with this confirmation, in the binarized part, IntelliScan technology is applied to improve user responsiveness and improve user operability and work efficiency.

IntelliScan (IntelliScan) is a name given to the following technology, and is also a product name and trademark of a scanner reading utility commercialized based on this technology.
The above is also applied to database filing. That is, when data is registered, it is stored in multiple values such as full color / gray scale, and when the user displays it for viewing, binarization and density adjustment are performed to make it easy to see and the data size is suppressed.
In this case, until the user browses, the data size is not suppressed and the database capacity is compressed. For this reason, the size of a document that has not been accessed for a long period of time is automatically reduced by high compression (MRC) or monochrome binarization. Documents accessed by the user are stored in an optimal state, and documents that have not been accessed for a long time are automatically reduced in size.

An image processing system embodying the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of an image processing system embodying the present invention.
As shown in FIG. 1, this image processing system performs reading control of a branch scanner 1 that reads image information such as a slip image (full color) and the branch scanner 1, and also reads the read image information via a network communication network. A scanner control PC 2 for transmission, a head office server 3 for receiving image information read by the branch scanner 1 via a network communication network, and a head office accounting processing PC 5 for performing predetermined processing on the image information from the head office server 3 ing.
In FIG. 1, the slip image (full color) read by the branch scanner 1 is transmitted to the head office server 3 and temporarily stored in the first database 6 as it is, and is displayed and slip processed by the head office accounting processing PC 5. At the same time, a visual confirmation operation is performed. As a result, if necessary, image adjustment such as density adjustment is performed, and the result is converted into a monochrome image and stored in the second database 7 of the head office server 3.

In addition, the image confirmation and adjustment screen for performing the visual confirmation processing by the user is not provided with a special one, but the confirmation view of the slip image and the adjustment of the display state of the image are almost the same as the conventional business processing screen. This is realized by preparing a button for use.
Here, the operator of the branch scanner 1 is assumed to be an unspecified number of people who are unfamiliar with PC operations, such as part-time employees of insurance diplomacy or workers of civil engineering offices, or who do not consider PC operations as their main business. It is assumed that the slip is scanned and sent to the head office for the expense processing and slip processing such as deposit processing and transportation expense settlement. In general, it is often the case that a monetary amount is input on a PC and a slip image is attached for proof / confirmation.
On the other hand, in the head office PC5, a full-time operator operates for office processing / accounting processing. In general, slip images are stored and managed as additional information for checking whether there is a mistake in the amount of money entered or for tracking it later. Therefore, there should be no inconvenience such as inability to read the amount of money of the scanned image.

However, if you confirm that the image has been scanned to the branch operator before sending it, you can adjust the scan density to match the density of the document, or repeat the process many times if you cannot scan well. The work load of the branch operator is increased.
Therefore, in this embodiment, the scanned image is transmitted unconditionally without confirmation. By scanning in full color (or gray scale), it is basically possible to scan without missing information. Even if the paper size to be scanned does not have to be wrong, use the automatic paper detection function of the scanner 1 or use the automatic trimming that automatically cuts out margins in the scanner control PC 2 (the scan size is maximized, Send the image), etc., to avoid mistakes in the paper size.

The head office operator always confirms the image of the slip for slip processing, and finally saves it as a monochrome binary image to reduce the database capacity, and displays the binarized image by default on the head office PC 5.
Since image processing such as binarization and color reduction is performed at the display timing, if the entire image is processed as it is, processing time may be required, and the display speed may be reduced and operator operability may be impaired. There is. Therefore, only the screen display portion is cut out and processed in order to perform processing at high speed and allow the operator to process comfortably.

FIG. 2 is a functional configuration diagram of the image processing system shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 2, the scanner & transmission unit 11 in the branch scanner 1, the operation panel or the operation PC 2 performs scan processing and transmits the result, and the reception & temporary storage unit 13 in the head office server 3 receives the scan data. And temporarily stored in a temporary storage 6 such as a database.

  Next, the search & data retrieval unit 15 retrieves and retrieves data to be processed, and the binarization / color reduction processing unit 17 performs binarization or color reduction and density adjustment processing. Here, density adjustment refers to general image processing such as gamma correction, luminance adjustment, contrast adjustment, and binarization threshold adjustment. That is, here, the original image at the display position or the position designated by the user is extracted in accordance with the user operation, and the image density is changed by changing parameters such as brightness adjustment, gamma correction, and binarization threshold for a part of the image. It is redisplaying. It should be noted that instead of binarization / color reduction that can be switched by the user, smoothing reduction such as bicubic or bilinear or monochrome-> grayscale reduction is performed, so that the image is displayed with the best visibility when displayed on the screen. It is also possible to adjust the readability of characters in the image to an optimum state by changing the brightness, gamma correction, color, etc. of the image by user operation.

The field composition & display unit 19 in the head office PC 5 is a part that manages the base image and the field image as necessary, and combines (or superimposes) and displays the image. Here, the base image is a so-called background image indicating the entire slip, and the field image is an image obtained by cutting out only a part of the slip, and exists when the density is changed or the color is changed only partially.
The head office PC 5 is a terminal that performs substantial business processing such as slip processing and accounting processing using a scanned document, and the input control unit 23 in the head office PC 5 controls and determines user operations. Here, the user operation refers to image operations such as image scrolling, magnification designation, density adjustment designation, and adjustment area designation. In addition, operations according to business processing such as confirmation are included.
The operation / display area determination unit 25 is a part for determining the operation content for the image based on the user operation content, and the image cutout unit 27 cuts out the portion when the user operation is density adjustment for only a part of the image. To create a field image.

  The density adjustment unit 29 is a part that determines a density adjustment parameter according to a user operation, and the binarization / color reduction processing unit 17 performs density adjustment based on this parameter. The synthesis & storage processing unit 31 is a part that combines and saves the operation contents and results so far when confirmation or storage is executed by a user operation, and the final result is stored in the storage hangar 7. . Here, when the number of colors of the image at an arbitrary position designated by the user is different, the whole image is monochrome photographed in one page by saving it in a format that allows a plurality of images to be superimposed and saved like PDF. Only a portion can be mixed with the color and stored. In addition, when the image after density adjustment or color number change specified by the user is saved as a file, it can be saved as a separate file.

FIG. 3 is an operation flowchart of the image processing system shown in FIG.
In step 101 in FIG. 3, the branch user operates the branch scanner 1, and the scanner & transmission unit 11 in the operation panel or the operation PC 2 performs a scanning process and transmits the result (step 103). The temporary storage unit 13 receives the scan data and temporarily stores it in the temporary storage 6 such as a database (step 105).

Next, in step 107, the search & data extraction unit 15 searches and retrieves data to be processed in accordance with an instruction from the head office user, and the binarization / color reduction processing unit 17 performs binarization, color reduction, and density adjustment processing ( Step 109). Here, density adjustment refers to general image processing such as gamma correction, luminance adjustment, contrast adjustment, and binarization threshold adjustment.
In step 111, the field composition & display unit 19 in the head office PC 5 manages the base image and the field image as necessary, and synthesizes (or superimposes) and displays the image on the screen. Here, the base image is a so-called background image indicating the entire slip, and the field image is an image obtained by cutting out only a part of the slip, and exists when the density is changed or the color is changed only partially.

Next, in step 113, the head office user determines whether or not the display image is satisfactory. If the display image is unsatisfactory, the head office user performs a density adjustment operation (step 115), and the display area and operation range. Is determined (step 117), and it is determined whether the density adjustment region is the entire image or a part of the image (step 119).
If the density adjustment area is a part, the image of the area determination part is cut out as necessary (step 121), the density adjustment parameter is calculated according to the user operation (step 123), and the image is cut out based on this parameter. The image is binarized or subtracted (step 125), the base image and the field image are combined and displayed on the screen (step 127), and then the process returns to step 111.

  If the display image is satisfied by the head office user in step 113, the operation contents and results obtained so far are combined in the following processing and stored in the storage hangar 7 (step 129). It is determined whether or not to save by field (step 131). If the colors are not mixed and the field is not stored, the image is combined and saved (step 133), and the colors are mixed. In the case of storage by field, a plurality of images are stored in a format that can be stored in an overlapping manner, such as PDF, or field images are stored separately (step 135).

4, 5, and 6 are explanatory diagrams showing sample screens that are viewed and operated by an operator who processes slips at the head office PC.
First, it is assumed that an image as shown in FIG. 4A has been scanned, and the head office PC 5 defaults to monochrome binary display. In this case, the display result is as shown in FIG. 4B and the characters cannot be read. This is because the original document was extremely thin, and the same result was obtained even when monochrome scanning with a normal scanner. Need to scan.
However, since there is a color scanned image in the present invention, if the density is adjusted by adjusting the binarization threshold based on this, most characters can be read as shown in FIG. .
However, if the character density of the original is different depending on the location, the entire character cannot be read even if the density is adjusted. In such a case, as shown in FIG. 5B, all the characters can be decoded by designating the area where the character is thin and adjusting the density of only that portion (the field in the flowchart of FIG. 2). Function of).

  In the screen samples shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, the operation buttons and the like are those of the test program and do not assume an actual business screen, and a sample assuming the actual business screen is as shown in FIG. . In this way, an operation button for adjusting the density of the slip image is added to the normal business processing screen. In other words, it is only necessary to adjust the density when characters cannot be read at the time of normal slip confirmation work, and there is no need to perform another work or operation such as re-scanning or confirmation work to adjust the scan density. It is a feature of the present invention that information can be acquired and manipulated.

  In addition, if the amount of money in the slip is designated at the time of accounting processing (as shown in FIG. 6A) (the density is adjusted so that it is easy to see if necessary), the approval screen is displayed as shown in FIG. 6B. By displaying the amount portion of the slip image, it is possible to configure a screen that can be easily confirmed by the approver. This is an application example of steps 129, 133, and 135 in the flowchart of FIG. That is, normally, even if the density is adjusted for each field so that the entire slip is easy to see, finally, in step 133, it is synthesized and stored as one image. However, as shown in FIG. 6B, if it is desired to specially handle only the money portion, it can be easily realized by storing the field image separately in step 135.

  It can also be applied to a case where a part of a slip is desired to be left as a color image. In such a case (the whole is monochrome and only a part of color) is stored as an image, it is difficult to efficiently save the file size and the like, but adjustment and operation can be performed in units of fields as in the embodiment of the present invention. If so, the whole (background image) can be efficiently saved as a monochrome MMR, and a part (field image) can be saved as color JPEG in a format in which a plurality of images can be saved by being overlapped as in PDF.

Further, when considering the use in business as shown in FIG. 6, the use of the slip image is mainly displayed on the screen for confirmation. In the case of such a usage method, since the screen size is generally limited to SVGA, XGA, and the like, the display is reduced to display a high-resolution image such as 300 dpi or 400 dpi.
In such a case, saving the image reduced to fit the screen size, such as 800 x 600 dots, can save the file size and save the visibility on the screen rather than saving the image in monochrome binary to reduce the compression size. Also gets better.
Such an embodiment can be realized by providing the binarization / color reduction processing unit 7 of FIG. 1 with an image reduction function. The image reduction function uses a function that can maintain the visibility of the slip even if the image quality is well reduced as follows.
-Monochrome binary image reduction = Gray scale (multi-value) reduction reduces data loss (so as not to erase fine lines) and generates an image with good visibility.
There is a general method that can reduce color and gray images while reducing image quality degradation, such as bicubic method and bilinear method.
In this case, the operator of the head office PC 5 switches the reduction method to a method with good visibility or adjusts the density while observing the reduced display result on the screen. The result is stored in the database 7 as a slip image reduced to the screen size.
From the next time, the slip image will be in the optimal state (size, image quality) according to the screen size, so that the operator and the operator can work efficiently with high visibility without extra operations such as zooming the image. become.

Next, another embodiment of the image processing system according to the present invention will be described.
FIG. 7 is a functional configuration diagram of another embodiment of the image processing system according to the present invention.
As shown in FIG. 7, this image processing system includes an image data registration unit that registers an image in a database in an image input device 40 that reads and inputs image information, a database 41, and a user who monitors updating of user-specific data. Another data update monitoring device 43, a composite display processing device 45, a display device 47, and an input device 49 are included.
The user-specific data update monitoring device 43 integrates and organizes user-specific data and reflects it in the database 41, a common-part determining unit 57 that determines and searches for common parts of user-specific data, and user-common part data. A color reduction / resizing control unit 59 that performs image color reduction / resizing based on the image data, an image data update control unit 61 that updates an image in a database, and a user-specific data input / output control unit 63 that reads / updates user-specific data. Have.
The database 41 also includes an image data storage 51 for storing registered image data, and display data storages 53a and 53b for each user for storing display information for each user.

The composite display processing device 45 also includes an image data input / output unit 65 for fetching / updating an image from the database, a user individual data input / output control unit 67 for inputting / outputting user-specific information, and a minimum necessary area. A cutout processing unit 69 that cuts out an image for processing, a data size suppression control unit 71 that performs binarization / color reduction / magnification / MRC conversion for data size suppression, and a color adjustment processing unit 73 that performs color adjustment A combination processing unit 75 that combines the results of density and color adjustment for each region, a display control unit 77 that displays the result of the combination processing unit, and a display operation and display content change operation detected by a user operation, And a user operation control unit 79 for controlling data processing and storage based on the data.
Here, MRC conversion is a technique for performing mixed raster content processing, that is, high compression processing for character / background separation. The density adjustment of a binary display image is binarized after adjusting the density of the original gray / color image. There are several methods, such as control by the threshold of binarization, and the optimum one is selected at that time.

FIG. 8 is an operation flowchart of another embodiment of the image processing system according to the present invention shown in FIG.
In step 201 of FIG. 8, the user displays an image stored in the database 41, and determines whether or not individual user display data exists (step 203). The display data is read, the setting state is displayed (step 205), and the user changes the display state to his / her preference (step 207). If there is no individual user display data, the contents are initially displayed with default settings in the system (step 209), and the process proceeds to step 207.
Next, after the user changes the display state according to his / her preference, when a certain period has elapsed and the user has not been accessed for a long time (steps 211 and 213), the user has been accessed after the certain period. It is determined whether or not there are a plurality of individual user display data for a certain file (step 215). If there are a plurality of individual user display data, the state that is the greatest common divisor is calculated from each individual user data. (Step 217), the original image data and the user-specific data are re-registered in accordance with the state of the greatest common divisor (Step 219).

If only one user individual display data exists, the image data is updated according to the user individual data (step 221). For a file that has not been accessed after a certain period of time, the image data in the database 41 is converted and updated to the contents that are set by default in the system (step 223).
As a result, it is possible to adjust the density and binarize the portion stored in multiple values such as color (step 225a), and when the original data is updated with the monochrome binary, the density cannot be adjusted thereafter. (Step 225b).
In other words, when a user displays an image stored in the database and changes its display state as before, the state is saved for each user, and multiple users display the same image. In such a case, there is a possibility that the display state is different for each user due to a difference in purpose or preference for each user or display performance of the display device.
Therefore, there is a possibility that the processing for suppressing the data size of the database according to the display state of the user cannot be made common. In such a case, as shown in FIG. 8, the state that is the greatest common divisor is calculated from the information for each user and the database is updated. On the other hand, an image that has not been accessed by any user is converted into monochrome binarization, If the processing for suppressing the image data is performed in accordance with the system setting such as MRC conversion or low resolution, the above-described conventional problems are solved.

  In order to efficiently maintain the greatest common divisor state, when there are overlapping portions, one of two regions including both directions or two independent regions having a smaller area or data size is adopted. It can also be done. In addition, in order to hold the reduced image efficiently and with high image quality, either a high-resolution monochrome binary image or a reduced multi-value image can be selected. Further, when monochrome binary is selected, gray scale conversion is performed in the reduced display, and when multiple values are selected, reduction processing for high image quality is performed in advance, and which of the two is selected is selected. It can also be made to be automatically selected according to the content and usage method or selected according to the use of the user. In addition, documents that have not been accessed for a long period of time are regularly checked, and according to the check results, high compression (MRC), resolution reduction, and monochrome conversion are automatically performed to reduce the database capacity. You can also.

FIG. 9 is an information flow chart of a specific example of another embodiment of the image processing system according to the present invention shown in FIG. FIG. 10 is an operation flowchart of a specific example of another embodiment of the image processing system according to the present invention shown in FIG.
In this specific example, the display data for each user is monitored by the user-specific data monitoring device 43 and the database is updated.
As shown in FIG. 10, (1) the process starting from START (steps 301 to 323) shows how user A and user B change the display state according to their own preferences, and (2) START after a certain period of time Then, after a certain period of time, the information for each user is organized and reflected / updated in the database (steps 325 to 339).

  The reason why a certain period is set before starting the processing is as follows. In other words, once the database is updated with the data size suppressed, it cannot be restored to the initial state, and it is necessary to accumulate the usage record to some extent by the user. For example, after the monochrome binarization, even if another user wants to perform color display, the color cannot be restored. Therefore, the database is retained for the time being in the initial state (color), and when the user's usage record is accumulated and it is understood that only the monochrome binary is displayed, the binary is converted into monochrome and the database is updated. To do. At this time, if even one person has a color display portion, only that area is stored in color.

Next, (3) START after updating DB image data indicates processing (steps 341 to 349) in which another user performs display after the database is updated as described above.
FIG. 11 is a diagram showing a display example in the specific examples shown in FIGS.
As shown in FIG. 11A, only part of the color is displayed for the user A in monochrome binary, and as shown in FIG. 11B, the user B is in color in addition to the state of the user A. This shows a state where the area has increased, the monochrome binary density has been changed, and the gray scale portion has been added.
As described above, when the user A and the user B store different display states, the state shown in the lower left is obtained after the database 41 is updated by obtaining the state of the greatest common divisor. That is, a minimum state for satisfying both user A / B requirements is obtained.

  When this is displayed by another user C, as shown in FIGS. 11 (c) and 11 (d), only the display satisfying both user A / B as shown in the lower right and operations that can be changed thereafter are limited. Is done. In the initial state, since the whole was held in color, it was possible to change freely. However, after the user-specific data was merged and the database was updated, the operation content is limited. However, it can be seen that the requirements of the users A and B are sufficiently satisfied, and the database size can be suppressed while satisfying most user needs by updating the database after a certain period of time. In addition, since the image processing performed at the time of display is minimized after updating the database, display speed can be increased.

FIG. 12 has a function of selecting a method for reducing the image quality or data size of either a high-resolution monochrome binary or a reduced multi-valued image in order to hold a reduced image efficiently and with high quality. It is explanatory drawing of the modified example.
When obtaining the state of the greatest common divisor, as shown in FIG. 12 (a), if the areas overlap, as shown in FIGS. 12 (b) and (c), one There are two methods, one is to make the area and the other is to save it separately as two independent areas. In this case, the area and data size when saving both are calculated and the one with smaller size is adopted. is doing.

FIG. 13 has a function of selecting a method for reducing the image quality or data size of either a high-resolution monochrome binary image or a reduced multi-valued image in order to hold a reduced image efficiently and with high quality. It is explanatory drawing of the modified example.
First, when a user has to reduce an image for display on a terminal such as a PDA or mobile phone, the visibility of the image is important. When the original image is multi-valued, it is generally better to perform quality-oriented reduction processing such as bi-cubic processing while maintaining multi-value. f) shows an example when the image quality is poor. In particular, when the target is a character image, by performing binarization combined with edge extraction processing, it is possible to obtain a binary image in which characters are not faint and are not crushed. Such a binary image is reduced to a gray scale. There is a case where a clear image with good character visibility can be obtained by performing a method of reducing information deterioration by making one pixel multi-value for the reduction. The merit of adopting this method is that it can follow the change in the display magnification of the user. In other words, there is a range of magnifications that can handle from high resolution to reduced display. Moreover, it can process at high speed. The data size is small despite the high resolution.

On the other hand, when the high image quality is reduced while maintaining multiple values, if the image is reduced and saved to suppress the data size, display at a large magnification cannot be performed. Demerits such as the necessity of preparing different images for a plurality of magnifications and the processing time are caused. Both the advantages and disadvantages can not be limited to one or the other to depends on the usage.
Therefore, in this modification, determination criteria as shown in the table of FIG. 13G are set, and processing is performed with the higher determination criteria. As a result, it is determined how to perform processing in the case of saving in the state of the greatest common divisor.

It is a schematic block diagram of the image processing system which implemented this invention. It is a functional block diagram of the image processing system shown in FIG. 3 is an operation flowchart of the image processing system shown in FIG. 1. It is explanatory drawing which shows the sample of the screen which the operator who carries out a slip process with head office PC sees and operates. It is explanatory drawing which shows the sample of the screen which the operator who carries out a slip process with head office PC sees and operates. It is explanatory drawing which shows the sample of the screen which the operator who carries out a slip process with head office PC sees and operates. It is a function block diagram of other embodiment of the image processing system by this invention. It is an operation | movement flowchart of other embodiment of the image processing system by this invention shown in FIG. FIG. 8 is an information flowchart of a specific example of another embodiment of the image processing system according to the present invention shown in FIG. 7. It is an operation | movement flowchart of the specific example of other embodiment of the image processing system by this invention shown in FIG. It is the figure which showed the example of a display in the specific example shown in FIGS. In order to maintain a reduced image efficiently and with a high quality image, a modified example having a function of selecting a method for reducing the image quality or data size of either a high-resolution monochrome binary image or a reduced multi-valued image. It is explanatory drawing. In order to maintain a reduced image efficiently and with a high quality image, a modified example having a function of selecting a method for reducing the image quality or data size of either a high-resolution monochrome binary image or a reduced multi-valued image. It is explanatory drawing.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Branch scanner, 2 ... PC, 3 ... Head office server, 5 ... PC, 6 ... 1st database, 7 ... 2nd database, 11 ... Transmission part, 13 ... Temporary storage part, 17 ... Value / color reduction process , 19 ... display unit, 23 ... input control unit, 25 ... operation / display area determination unit, 29 ... density adjustment unit,
DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 31 ... Storage processing part, 40 ... Image input device, 41 ... Database, 43 ... User-specific data monitoring device, 45 ... Composite display processing device, 47 ... Display device, 49 ... Input device, 51 ... Image data storage, 53 ... User Separate display data storage, 55 ... update processing unit, 57 ... common part determination unit, 59 ... color reduction / resize control unit, 61 ... image data update control unit, 63 ... user-specific data input / output control unit, 65 ... image data input / output 67: User individual data input / output control unit, 71 ... Data size suppression control unit, 73 ... Color adjustment processing unit, 75 ... Composition processing unit, 77 ... Display control unit, 79 ... User operation control unit

Claims (5)

And branch scanner for reading image information of the document image, the headquarters server image information read received via communication network in said supporting store scanner performs reading control of the branch scanner, read image information communication network An image processing system comprising: a scanner control PC that transmits to the head office server via the head office; and a head office accounting processing PC that performs predetermined processing on image information from the head office server ,
The branch scanner includes image information reading means for reading multi-value image information to obtain multi-value image information,
The scanner control PC includes transmission means for transmitting the multivalued image information read by the image information reading means via the network communication network;
The head office server receives a first storage unit for storing multi-value image information, and receives the multi-value image information from the transmission unit, and keeps the multi-value image information in the first storage unit. Storage control means for storing,
The head office accounting processing PC displays multi-value image information stored in the first storage means transmitted from the head office server , performs predetermined processing by the user, and converts it into binary image information. An image information processing means for performing a predetermined image adjustment according to a result of visual recognition of the displayed multi-valued image information when performing the predetermined processing;
Image processing characterized in that the storage control means performs storage control for storing the binary image information converted by the image information processing means transmitted from the head office accounting processing PC in a second storage means. system.   The predetermined image adjustment by the image information processing means extracts an original image at a display position or a position designated by the user in accordance with a user operation, and performs luminance adjustment, gamma correction, and binarization threshold parameter change for a part of the image. The image processing system according to claim 1, wherein the image processing system is an adjustment process in which the density of an image is changed and displayed again.   In the storage control in which the storage control means stores binary image information from the image information processing means in the second storage means, when the number of colors of the image at an arbitrary position designated by the user is different, PDF 2. The image processing system according to claim 1, wherein a plurality of images are stored in a format that can be stored in an overlapping manner, whereby the entire monochrome image portion is mixed and stored in one page. .   In the storage control in which the storage control means stores binary image information from the image information processing means in the second storage means, an image after density adjustment or color number change specified by a user is filed. 3. The image processing system according to claim 1, wherein when the image is stored, the image is stored as a separate file.   When the predetermined image adjustment by the image information processing means is displayed on the screen by performing smoothing reduction such as bicubic or bilinear or monochrome-> grayscale reduction instead of binarization / color reduction, which is switched by the user. It is an adjustment process that processes the image in the most visible state, changes the brightness, gamma correction, and color of the image by the user's operation, and adjusts the readability of characters in the image to the optimal state The image processing system according to claim 2.

Images