JPH01266679A - Picture information changing system for digital picture - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To easily and high speedily change the picture information of a color, luminance, etc., even for a specific area having a complicated shape and a large area by using a circular area cursor having a fixed area when the boundary of the specific area is to be extracted. CONSTITUTION:On a display picture 10, a circular area cursor 31 is moved along the outline of a specific area 1, and a boundary 2 between the specific area 1 and a background is formed. In such a case, an operator can easily and high speedily executes boundary extracting processing without faithfully tracking the boundary between the area 1 and the background even when the outline of the area 1 has the complicated shape by using the cursor 31 having the fixed area. Further, when the center of the cursor 31 is moved to the inside of the area 1, and the change of the color is designated by pressing a key switch for designating the change of the color in a CRT, a processor in the CRT executes color changing processing for all the picture elements included within the line 2 with one picture element at the center of the cursor 31 as the starting point. Thus, the picture information of the color, the luminance, etc., can be changed easily and high speedily even for the specific area having the complicated shape and the large area.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention relates to a changing method for changing image information such as color and brightness of a digital image displayed on a display screen such as a CRT display device.

(Prior art) Conventionally, when displaying a color image with gradation like a photograph on this type of display screen, and changing image information such as color and brightness only within a specific area of the image while viewing the image, A method using a so-called cross cursor or a method using an area cursor is adopted.

Among these, the method using a cross cursor displays a cross cursor on the display screen that can point to a specific pixel by the intersection of a cross, and uses this cross cursor to change the color, brightness, etc. The procedure for changing the color in a specific area of an image using this method will be described below with reference to FIG.

FIG. 2(a) shows an image 20 of a "house" displayed on the display screen 10 before the color change. Now, assume that the color of the agricultural machine 21 portion of this image 20 is to be changed.

First, the operator moves the crosshair cursor 30 in the direction of the arrow along the outline of the roof 21 whose color is to be changed as shown in FIG. A border line 22 (border line with the background) is created. This boundary line 22 is displayed on the display screen 10 in a specific color such as white.

Next, after moving the crosshair cursor 30 to the inside of the boundary line 32 as shown in FIG. Give instructions for changes. Upon receiving such an instruction, the processor executes a color change process for all pixels within the boundary line 22, starting from the pixel within the boundary line 22 specified by the cross cursor 30. As a result, the color of the roof 21 is changed, as shown in FIG. 4(d).

As described above, in this method, after the boundary line 22 of a specific area is created using the cross cursor 30, the processor executes the color change within the boundary line 22 by instructing only the starting point of one color change. Even in such cases, the operator only needs to extract the boundary line and indicate the starting point, and can efficiently change the color and brightness.

Next, a method using an area cursor will be explained.

Here, the area cursor is a cursor with a certain size, such as a circle or a rectangle, and while the cross cursor 30 can only indicate one pixel, the -area cursor can indicate multiple pixels contained within it. It is possible to designate pixels at the same time.

Taking advantage of this feature, this method executes color changes through the following steps. Note that the image to be processed is a "house" image 20 as shown in FIG. Also,
A circular area cursor will be used.

First, as shown in FIG. 3B, the area cursor 31 is moved along the outline of the roof 21 to create a boundary line 22 surrounding the roof 21. At this time, the operator only has to move the cursor 31 so that the boundary is contained within the circular area cursor 31, and thereby the processor within the CRT display device can extract the boundary within the area cursor 31.

Next, the operator presses the key switch for color change instruction,
After instructing the processor to change the color, the area cursor 31
is moved, for example, in the direction of the arrow shown in FIG. At this time, the processor performs color change processing on pixels within the area cursor 31 and included in the boundary line 22. In other words, the color change process is not executed for pixels within the area cursor 31 that are outside the boundary line 22. Therefore, when the operator moves the area cursor 31, the area cursor 31 is located outside the boundary line 22. line 2
Even if it protrudes outside of 2, the processing can be continued without any concern.

In this way, by tracing all the pixels within the boundary line 22 with the area cursor 31, the final result is shown in the figure (
The color change of the roof 21 is completed as shown in (d).

In this method, the processor extracts the boundary within the area cursor 31, so unlike the method using the cross cursor 30, there is no need for the operator to track the boundary between the specific area and the background pixel by pixel. , since the operator only has to track the boundary so that it falls within the area cursor 31 having a certain area, the boundary line 22
can be easily created.

(Problem to be solved by the invention) However, in the method using the cross cursor described above,
Since the operator needs to track the boundary line pixel by pixel using the crosshair cursor 30,
It has a complicated outline as shown in the figure, and it requires a great deal of attention and effort to draw the boundary line of the specific area 23.

Therefore, there is a problem in that it is very inefficient to change the color, brightness, etc. of a specific area with a complicated shape using this method.

On the other hand, in the method using an area cursor, the operation during boundary line tracking is easy as described above, but on the other hand, when changing the color after the boundary is created, the operator moves the area cursor 31 to all pixels within the boundary line 22. Since it is necessary to move it in a tracing manner, there is a drawback that it takes a long time to change the color of a specific area 24 having a large area as shown in FIG.

The present invention was proposed in order to solve the above problems, and its purpose is to solve the problem of complexity in digital images by combining the advantages of the area cursor method and the cross cursor method. An object of the present invention is to provide a changing method that allows image information such as color and brightness to be easily and quickly changed even for a large-area specific area having a unique shape.

(Means for Solving the Problems) In order to achieve the above object, the present invention extracts the boundary line of a specific area where image information is to be changed using an area cursor, and when instructing to change the image information, a cross Similar to the method using a cursor, changing processing is performed by the processor by specifying one pixel within the specific area.

(Operation) According to the present invention, the boundary line of a specific area is extracted by moving the area cursor, and the boundary is determined by the processor. In addition, by pointing the area cursor to one pixel within the specific area from which the boundary line has been extracted, the processor power is used to change the image information within the specific area.

(Example) An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIGS. 1(A) to 1(D) show the procedure for changing image information according to the present invention.

In the same figure (A), 10 is a display screen such as a CRT display device as described above, and this screen °10
A digitally processed image of the object is displayed. In this embodiment, the color of the entire image of the object is changed, but the following description also includes the case of changing the color of a specific area that forms part of the image as described above.
The entire image in b) is defined as specific area 1.

First, as shown in FIG. 5B, for example, a circular area cursor 31 is moved along the outline of the specific area 1, and a boundary line 2 with the background as shown in FIG. At this time, the operator only has to move the cursor roughly so that the boundary is included within the area cursor 31 having a certain area, and the processor in the CRT display device extracts the boundary line within the area cursor 31. can do.

That is, even if the contour of the specific area 1 is complex, the operator does not need to faithfully track the boundary with the background, and can extremely easily perform the boundary extraction process. Note that the extracted boundary line 2 is a closed curve 6 Next, as shown in FIG. Press the color change instruction key switch provided on the screen to give a color change instruction to the processor. The processor that receives this instruction moves area cursor 3
The color change process is executed for all pixels included in the boundary line 2, starting from one pixel in the center of the boundary line 2.
This is to obtain an image of the specific area 1 after color change as shown in the figure.

Various methods are known for such color changing processing, and for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 56-1 filed by the present applicant et al.
The method described in Japanese Patent No. 42585, etc. can be used.

Note that although the above embodiment shows a case where a circular area cursor 31 is used, the shape of the area cursor may be rectangular, square, etc., and the image information to be changed may be brightness, pattern, etc. .

(Effects of the Invention) As described above, according to the present invention, boundary lines can be extracted using the same operation as the method using an area cursor, so even specific areas with complex contours can be extracted easily in a short time. Boundary extraction can be performed. In addition, to change the color, etc., you only need to specify one pixel within the boundary line, similar to the method using a cross cursor, so there is no need to trace all the pixels within the boundary line as with the conventional area cursor method. This eliminates the need for any operations, and has the effect of allowing image information to be changed at high speed even in a large, specific area.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figures 1 (a) to (d) are explanatory diagrams of the processing procedure according to an embodiment of the present invention, Figures 2 (a) to (d) and Figures 3 (a) to
(d) is an explanatory diagram of the processing procedure of the method using a cross cursor and an area cursor, respectively, and FIGS. 4 and 5 are diagrams explaining the drawbacks of the method using a cross cursor and an area cursor, respectively. 1... Specific area 2... Boundary line 10...
・Display screen 31...Area cursor 1st
Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] A method for changing image information such as color and brightness of a specific area of a digital image that has been digitally processed and displayed on a display screen through processing by a processor of a display device, comprising: Executing boundary line extraction by the processor using an area cursor,
An image information changing method for a digital image, characterized in that the image information is changed by pointing one pixel in the specific area with the area cursor.