JPH0249587B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an image editing method in which a specific image portion is extracted from a first image, the extracted image is subjected to scaling processing, and then inserted into a second image.

Conventionally, in order to perform such image editing, as shown in FIG. The specific image A is cut out by specifying two points a1 and a2 in a rectangular area in the specific image A with a position indicating means such as a pen, and a second image B2 is further inserted into which the variable-scale image of the specific image A is inserted. is displayed on the display surface, and the scaling ratio is set using an input means such as a keyboard. Then, as shown in Figure b, point b at the insertion point of the scaled image is indicated, and the scaled image A' is inserted. is inserted into the second image B2 as shown.

However, in such a conventional image editing method, the resized image A' is inserted into the blank area only according to an operator's instruction, regardless of the size of the blank area in the second image B2 to be inserted. Since the magnification ratio of the inserted image A' is determined, if the set magnification ratio is not appropriate, the inserted resized image A' will be different from the other image area C as shown in Figure 2a. If the images overlap (the overlapping area is indicated by the shaded area in the figure), the result will be an unbalanced image with many blank areas as shown in Figure b. Therefore, it is necessary to perform repeated operations until the optimal scaling ratio is found according to the size of the blank area into which the scaled image A' is inserted, resulting in extremely poor operability.

The present invention has been made in consideration of the above points, and
By simply pointing a point in the blank area of the variable magnification image insertion point in the second image displayed on the display surface using a position indicating means such as a cursor or light pen, you can determine the size of the blank area at that point. To provide an image editing method that allows a specific image extracted from a first image to be inserted with an optimal scaling factor depending on the image size.

In the image editing method according to the present invention, each of the first and second images is divided into two pixels in units of pixels.
Based on the value image status information, the internal information is logically summed for each block of m×n pixel configuration of the same size to create blocks of image areas (black) and non-image areas (white), and further blocks are created. In the second image obtained, a rectangular blank area where blocks in the non-image area are adjacent to each other is found, and an address table is created for the rectangular blank area.
At least two specific images to be extracted from the first image displayed on the display surface.
The size of the specific image portion is determined by pointing a point, and the size of the specific image portion is determined by pointing an arbitrary point in the blank area to which the image is to be inserted in the second image displayed on the display surface. Then, the size of the blank area at that point is determined from the address table, and the optimum magnification and insertion position address are set according to the determined blank area size and the extracted specific image part size. This allows a specific image with variable magnification to be inserted at a predetermined position within a blank area.

FIG. 3 shows an example of a configuration for concretely implementing the image editing method according to the present invention. The configuration is such that images can be mutually inserted.

That is, a quantizer 1 that binary quantizes an input image signal BS obtained by scanning and sampling a first or second image pixel by pixel using a scanner, and A memory device 2 that stores the data of the first image and a memory device 3 that stores the data of the second image, and each block of m×n pixel configuration is A block generator 4 which calculates the logical sum of internal information to block each of the first and second images, a memory 5 which stores the logical sum information of the first image, and a second image. A memory device 6 for storing logical sum information of images as blocks.
and a memory 7 which stores an address table of a rectangular blank area in the first image created based on the memory contents of the memory device 5, and a second image created based on the memory contents of the memory device 6. A memory device 8 that stores an address table for a blank area, an address controller 9 that controls storage addresses in each memory device 2, 3, 5, and 6, and a memory device 9 that reads out the contents of the memory device 2 or 3 and stores it in the first or second memory device.
a display device 10 that displays an image; a keyboard 11 that can arbitrarily specify two or one point on the display surface by moving a cursor; and a keyboard 11 that controls the entire system and controls each of the first and second images. for the CPU 12 and programs that perform necessary processing such as creating an address table for a rectangular blank area, determining the optimal scaling ratio, and determining the insertion position of the scaling image.
It is composed of a ROM 13 and a table management RAM 14. It goes without saying that the binary image signal in pixel units read from the external storage device may be directly sent to the storage device 2 or 3 via the address controller 9.

In such a configuration, for example, the first image B1 shown in FIG. 4 and the second image B2 shown in FIG. 6 are each sampled in a square grid at a linear density of 4 x 4 pixels/mm. After each input image signal BS when read is binarized by the quantizer 1, each of the binarized image information is stored in the memory devices 2 and 3 via the address controller 9. At the same time, in the blockizer 4, each internal information is logically summed with each block having a 10×10 pixel configuration, and each of the first and second images is made into a block, and the first image B1 is made into a block. The logical sum information (see FIG. 5) is stored in the storage device 5, and the logical sum information (see FIG. 7) of the second image B2 is stored in the storage device 6. In addition, in each block of logical sum information in FIG. 5 and FIG. 7, the white "0" in the diagram
The blocks indicated by ``1'' in black indicate the non-image areas, and the blocks with black "1" indicated by diagonal lines indicate the image areas.

Next, the CPU 12 reads the contents of the memory 5 or 6 and sequentially performs the processing described below to determine each rectangular blank area, and stores the address table of each blank area in the memory 7 or 8.
have it created. That is, in the block coordinates (k, l) of FIG. 5 or FIG. When block information "0" is detected, the block is used as a temporary address to sequentially find a rectangular blank area consisting of a connection of blocks in the non-image area adjacent to each other.
The addresses of each determined blank area are registered in the area management table (see FIG. 8 or 9) in the storage device 7 or 8. Figure 8 shows the area management table, where each blank area W
1, W2, W3, ..., Wn, k1 is the starting point position of each area in the k direction in block coordinates (k, l), k2 is the ending point position, and l1
indicates the starting point position of each area in the l direction at the block coordinates (k, l), and l2 similarly indicates the ending point position. In addition, in FIG. 5, the blank area W1 is k1=0, k2=3, l1=0, l
2=12, and the blank area W2 is k1=5, k2
= 12, l1 = 0, l2 = 2, and the blank area W
3 is k1=6, k2=12, l1=l2=3, and blank area W4 is k1=8, k2=12, l1
=l2=4. The same applies hereafter. In addition, in FIG. 7, the blank area W1 is k1=9, k2
= 12, l1 = 0, l2 = 3, blank area W
2 is k1=0, k2=5, l1=3, l2=7, and blank area W3 is k1=6, k2=8, l
1=l2=3. The same applies hereafter.

Now, a case will be described below in which, for example, a specific image A in the first image B1 (FIG. 4) is inserted into a blank space in the second image B2 (FIG. 6).

In this case, first, the contents of the memory device 2 are read out, the data is transferred to the display device 10, the first image B1 is displayed on the display surface, and the operator operates the keyboard 11 to select the image to be edited on the screen. By instructing the user to specify two points a1 and a2 of the specific image A, the extraction is performed. Next, the contents of the memory device 3 are read out and the second image B2 is displayed on the display surface,
An arbitrary point b within the blank area at the location where the extracted specific image A is to be inserted is specified. The address of the indicated point b on the ij coordinates in Fig. 6 is (50, 40), and the block address of the indicated point b on the k-l coordinates of Fig. 7 is (50, 40). (5, 4). Therefore,
Based on the area management table previously created in the storage device 8, the CPU 12 finds a blank area W2 containing the block addresses of k=5 and l=4.

Next, the CPU 12 determines that the addresses on the i-j coordinates of the two points a1 and a2 specified in the first image B1 are (90, 80) and (120, 120), respectively.
, and the two-point addresses c1 and c2 on the i-j coordinates of the blank area W2 are (0,
30), (60, 80), and determine the scaling factor of the specific image A to be inserted into the blank area W2 as follows. In other words, the blank area W
2 and the specific image A in the i direction.
60/30=2, and 50/40=1.25 in the j direction, and the smaller value of the ratio of the sizes in each direction of i and j is selected as the variable magnification to take a variable magnification of 1.25. At the same time, based on the determined scaling factor, the CPU 12 determines one point P of the insertion position within the blank area W2 of the specific image A' scaled to 1.25 times as follows. That is, in this case, since the address Pj of point P in the j direction is scaled according to the size of the blank area W2, Pj
= 30, and the address of point P in the i direction
Pi is calculated using the following formula.

Pi={c2(i)−c1(i)}/2 −{a2(i)−a1(i)}・1.25/2 …(1) At that time, if you round down the 10th place and below, Pi=10, and Eventually, the address (10, 30) of point P will be determined.

Then, the image information of the specific image A specified by the two points a1 and a2 is read out from the storage device 2 and subjected to scaling processing at a scaling factor of 1.25, and then the processed image information is transferred to the storage device 2. Address P at
Desired image editing is executed by writing from (10, 30).

In this way, in the image editing method according to the present invention,
Two points a of specific image A in first image B1
1, a2, and any point b in the blank area in the second image B2, the optimum magnification ratio can be set according to the size of the blank area, and the magnification can be changed according to the size of the blank area. The insertion address P for each blank area of image A' is automatically determined, and as a result, there is no overlapping of image areas or skewing of the inserted image as in the past, and the blank area is scaled in a well-balanced manner. It becomes possible to insert the resized image A'.

Note that, contrary to the above case, when image A is extracted from the second image B2, subjected to scaling processing, and then inserted into the blank area Wx in the first image B1, the memory By performing the same processing as described above using the area management table created in the device 7, the desired image editing will be executed.

FIGS. 9a and 9b show the flow of creating an area management table in the image editing method of the present invention described above. In the figure, B(k, l) is the block information of the blocked image, Sk and Sl are the start address of the target white (non-image part) block, and Ek and El are the end address of the target white block. kmax and lmax indicate the maximum address of the block at the block coordinates (k, l), respectively.

As described above, in the image editing method according to the present invention,
When inserting a specific image extracted from the first image into a blank space in the second image, both the first and second images have the same size m× based on the binary image information in pixel units. Means for calculating the logical sum of internal information for each block of n pixels to create a block of image and non-image areas; A means for finding a blank area and creating an address table thereof, and a means for specifying at least two points of a specific image to be image extracted in the first image displayed on the display surface, thereby extracting the specific image part. and a means for extracting the image, and by instructing an arbitrary point in the blank area to be inserted into the second image displayed on the display surface, the size of the blank area at that point is determined from the address table. , and a means for setting the optimum magnification ratio and insertion position address according to the size of the determined blank area and the size of the extracted specific image portion, and does not require any operator judgment. It has the excellent advantage that image editing of image insertion using optimal scaling processing can be performed automatically and with good operability.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1a is a diagram showing a conventional method for extracting a specific image, Figure 1b is a diagram showing a conventional method for inserting a specific image that has been subjected to scaling processing, and Figures 2a and b are diagrams for setting or inserting a scaling ratio. FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a configuration example for concretely implementing the image editing method according to the present invention, and FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of the logical sum information of the first image, FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of the second image, and FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the logical sum information of the first image. Figure 8 is a diagram showing an address table (area management table) for a rectangular blank area, and Figures 9a and b are flowcharts for creating an area management table. . 1... Quantizer, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8... Memory device, 4... Block generator, 9... Address controller, 10... Display device, 11... Keyboard, 12... CPU, 13... ROM, 14 …RAM,
A...Specific image, W1~Wn...Blank area.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 When inserting a specific image extracted from the first image into a blank space in the second image, the first and second
means for forming image portions and non-image portions into blocks by calculating the logical sum of internal information for each block of m×n pixel configuration of the same size based on the binary image information in pixel units for each image; Means for finding rectangular blank areas where non-image blocks are adjacent to each other in the blocked second image and creating an address table therefor; and means for extracting images from the first image displayed on the display surface. means for extracting a specific image portion by specifying at least two points in the specific image to be targeted; and any one of the blank areas to be inserted into the second image displayed on the display surface; By specifying a point, the size of the blank area at that point is determined from the address table, and the optimum magnification ratio and insertion position are determined according to the determined blank area size and the extracted specific image part size. An image editing method employing a means for setting an address.