JPH01147670A - Image display method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To simplify an operation to retrieve image a data as desired by an operator by displaying the image data registered on image filing device in plural contracted images at one time and obtaining larger images as necessary. CONSTITUTION:When an operator retrieves an image stored in an image filing device 15, the original image is contracted and plural these reduced images are outputted at one time. Then the more detailed one of those images is designated by a pointing device 11. The designated image is magnified and displayed in superposition for example. Such operations are repeated until the desired image is obtained. This fact is designated by a device (not shown here) and the obtained image is stored in a memory 13. Thus the retrieving operation is ended.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to an image display method for displaying multiple image data stored in an image filing device and searching for a specific image.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, the method of searching for a specific image from among the image data stored in an image filing device is to assign a file name entered from the keyboard to each piece of image data stored in the image filing device, and then A method of searching using file names as keywords is used.

[The problem that the invention is trying to solve] With this method,
The input file name may be a similar file name,
There are cases where the user forgets the file name given to image data, and is often unable to distinguish the file name at will.

In this case, the operator displays the image data one by one on the display device for multiple file names, and repeats the process of checking the image data until the operator finds the desired image data. Ta.

As described above, the above conventional example has the drawback that the operation for searching for desired image data by the operator is complicated and time-consuming.

[Means and effects for solving the problem] According to the present invention, a plurality of images obtained by reducing image data registered in an image filing device at a certain reduction ratio are displayed simultaneously,
By displaying an image obtained by reducing one or more images specified by the operator at a reduction ratio smaller than the above-mentioned reduction ratio, it is possible to simplify the operation for the operator to search for desired image data, and to search for the desired image data. This is a shortened version of the time.

〔Example〕

Examples of the present invention will be described in detail below.

In this first embodiment, a case will be described in which one pixel of the display device can display information in the depth direction, that is, gradation information.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of the first embodiment. In FIG. 1, 10 is a display device that can also display gradation information, 11 is a pointing device that indicates coordinates, etc., 12 is a video memory for the IO display device, and 13 is a memory for image processing by a device not shown. , 14 is a system bus, 15 is an image filing device for storing image data, and 16 is a CPU that controls the entire system. For the purpose of explanation below, the number of pixels in both the main scanning direction and the sub-scanning direction of the original image stored in the 15 image filing devices is 512 pixels.
The number of pixels in the main scanning direction and the sub-scanning direction of the 10 display devices is also 512 pixels. The method of displaying images will be specifically explained below using figures.

Further, it is assumed that the operator has previously specified to the image filing device that the image filing device is to perform a search process for images stored in the device.

FIG. 2(a) shows an example of a plurality of reduced images displayed on a display device. In this example, to simplify the explanation, the original image is displayed as a reduced image that is reduced to 1/8 in both the main scanning direction and sub-scanning direction, that is, 1/64 in area, and 16 images are displayed simultaneously on the display screen. shall be output at the same time. Next, a method for creating this reduced image will be described. The conceptual diagram is shown in FIGS. 3(a) and 3(b). In this embodiment, the display device displays data in the depth direction,
That is, since gradation data can be displayed, it is necessary to reduce the size so as to preserve the gradation data in the original image. To simplify the explanation of the reduction method, the reduction ratio is assumed to be 1/4 area in the main/sub-scanning direction, which is 1/16. Figure 3 (a) shows the image of Imakata.
, a reduced image is shown in FIG. 3(b). In both figures, the l lattice is 1
It is a pixel. The method for reducing the size to 1/16 is shown in Figure 3 (a).
The original image shown in is divided into 4×4 blocks, and each pixel is numbered from (1, 1) to (4, 4). The representative pixel of 16 pixels in one block, for example, the pixel value of (1, 1), is changed to (1, 1) of the reduced image shown in FIG. 3(b).
There is a thinning method that uses the value 1). In this case, it can be easily inferred that the pixel value representing one block of the original image does not have to be (1, 1) but may be any pixel value among the 16 pixels. Furthermore, the reduction rate is not limited to 1/16 (1/64,
It can be easily inferred that the reduction ratio may be set to 1/9 or the like, and the reduction ratio may be independent of the main/sub-scanning directions. Using the above method, read from the image filing device and reduce the original image into 16 images.
By repeating this process, the image shown in FIG. 2(a) can be obtained.

The operator uses the pointing device 11 in FIG. 1 to specify the image he wants to view in detail from among the 16 reduced images as shown in FIG. 2(a).
You can enlarge and view the specified reduced image.

The explanation at this time will be described below, but for the sake of explanation, the image to be enlarged and displayed is the image F in FIG. 2(a). Further, the magnification ratio is twice that of the reduced image in the main/sub-scanning directions and four times the area. When the operator specifies an image F to be enlarged and displayed using a pointing device, only the image F is displayed in a larger size as shown in FIG. 2(b). The processing at this time will be specifically explained. The image data of the image F specified by the operator is read out from the image filing device shown in FIG. 1, and the reduction rate is increased to 4 times the reduction rate (magnification) described above to perform the reduction processing method shown in FIG. 3 described above. The same method was used to reduce the size and produce Figure 2 (
a) Overwrite the designated enlarged image at the position of image F in the image. By performing this process, a display as shown in FIG. 2(b) can be obtained. In addition, in the process of enlarging and displaying the image F, the image data of the image F is stored in the memory 12 in FIG.
It can be easily inferred that the image data stored in the image data may be enlarged four times in area and displayed. Furthermore, it can be easily inferred that a plurality of images may be enlarged and displayed.

By repeating the above operations, and when an image desired by the operator is found, the operator specifies it using a device (not shown), stores it in the memory 13 in FIG. 1, completes the search operation, and performs the next process (not shown), for example. Control can be transferred to image processing such as image editing.

[Other Examples]

In the second embodiment, a process will be described in which the display device in FIG. 1 is a binary output device, that is, a display device that cannot display gradations. FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram of the second embodiment. In the figure, 40 is a binary output display device, 41 is a video memory for the 40 display devices, and 42 is a binary output display device for storing image data with gradation data.
This is a device for converting values into values, and 11°, 13.14, and 15.16 have the same configuration as in FIG. The display method of the image data to be displayed on the display device of 40 uses the same FIG. 2 as in the first embodiment and the same reduction processing, so detailed explanation of FIG. 2 and explanation of the reduction processing will be omitted. . The following is an explanation of the second embodiment, especially the process up to displaying on a binary output display device, 2 in Fig. 4.
Processing of the value conversion device 42 is performed. Various binarization methods can be considered, but for ease of explanation, we will use a method in which pixel values are compared with a certain comparison value and binarized. A flowchart of this method is shown in FIG. The comparative values in Figure 5 are:
For example, if each pixel value is O~255, the intermediate value is 1
By setting the value of 28 and performing the processing shown in FIG. 5, the original image with gradation information stored in the image filing device shown in FIG. 4 can be easily binarized, and the Can be written to video memory. In addition, in the case of the first embodiment, the 41 video memory required memory capacity for 8 bits of gradation data for each pixel, for example, O to 255, but in the case of this embodiment, 1 bit for each pixel was required. The video memory 12 of the first embodiment can be configured with a smaller memory capacity than the video memory 12 of the first embodiment. Furthermore, although the binarization method in this embodiment has been described as a method of comparing with a certain comparison value and binarizing, it can be easily inferred that the method is not limited to this method.

Furthermore, the display layout of a plurality of reduced images and the display layout of a plurality of reduced images and one or more enlarged images are not limited to the display layouts shown in FIGS. 2(a) and 2(b). As shown in Figure 6(a), the reduced image display area and the enlarged image display area are separate areas, or as shown in Figure 6(b), an image for enlarged display is displayed on the base of the image being reduced. It can be easily inferred that various display layouts may be used. Furthermore, it can be easily inferred that the reduction ratio and enlargement ratio of the reduced image and enlarged display do not need to be unified, and may be made variable depending on the number of images to be displayed simultaneously.

In addition, in the above example, the process was performed on 16 images, but
If there are 16 or more images stored in the image filing device, you may scroll each image or -
It can also be easily inferred that scrolling may be performed for each screen.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the present invention, the original image stored in the image filing device is reduced and multiple images are displayed simultaneously, and the image specified by the operator is larger and more detailed than the image that is being reduced and displayed. By displaying images, you can view multiple images at the same time and search while comparing them with other images, and you can enlarge the image only when viewing detailed images, making confirmation work easier, simplifying search operations, and avoiding mistakes. Even if a user makes a selection, he or she can immediately return to searching for the next image, which reduces search time and also eliminates the need for the operator to assign a unique file name to each image.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a block diagram of the first embodiment. Figures 2 (a) and (b) are diagrams showing an example of the layout of image display. Figure 3 (a) and (b) are diagrams showing the reduction processing. Conceptual diagram, Figure 4 is a configuration diagram of the second embodiment, Figure 5 is a flowchart of binarization processing, Figure 6 (a)
, (b) are diagrams showing examples of other image display layouts. 10 is a display device, 12 is a video memory, and 15 is an image filing device.

Claims (6)

[Claims] (1) In an image processing device equipped with an image filing device for storing image data and a device for displaying image data, multiple images obtained by reducing the original image are simultaneously displayed on the display device, and one or more of the displayed images are An image display method characterized in that an image can be displayed larger than other images by changing the reduction ratio. (2) An image display method according to claim 1, wherein the image to be displayed in a reduced size is created from an original image stored in an image filing device. (3) An image display method according to claim 1, wherein the image displayed at a large reduction ratio is an image designated by an operator. (4) An image display method according to claim 1, wherein the image displayed at a small reduction ratio is an image reduced to I/M (M is a number of 1 or more) of the original image. (5) In claim 3, an image displayed at a large reduction ratio is an image displayed at a small reduction ratio N times (
An image display method characterized in that the image is an enlarged image (N is a number of 1 or more). (6) In claim 4, the image displayed at a large reduction ratio is the I/L of the original image (L is a number of 1 or more, M>
An image display method characterized in that the image is a reduced image.