JPH03105478A - Image file device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the quality of a restored image by inputting a multilevel picture image simultaneously with a binary image when an original image is inputted, and specifying density at the time of display/printing operation according to the image information on the multilevel picture image. CONSTITUTION:When an image is inputted from a scanner, the multilevel information is inputted by using a multilevel information control circuit 5 while the image is converted into a black-and-white binary information by a scanner control circuit 4. The circuit 5 corrects the illuminance of the analog waveform and slices the waveform with predetermined slice levels to convert the waveform into the many-valued information. The binary information and multilevel information are image-compressed by an image compressing and restoring circuit 7 and linked with tile information which is inputted on a keyboard 1, and the resulting information is written on an optical disk. Consequently, when a title is specified, multilevel information can be retrieved by indicating the multilevel information and the quality of the restored image at a print part 14 is improved.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to an image file device, and more particularly to an image file device capable of reproducing recorded images with image quality close to the original image.

[Conventional technology]

As described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 167569/1983, conventional devices thin out image information taken in by a scanner and record it on an optical disk in order to perform a high-speed search. There is only one type of slice bell at the time of import, and although retrieval speed is taken into consideration, there is no consideration given to restoring an image with the same quality as the original image.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

Although the above-mentioned conventional technology took into consideration the processing speed during retrieval, it lacked consideration for restoring the original image more faithfully.
Therefore, even after the image is registered in the image file device, there is a problem in that the original image needs to be saved.

An object of the present invention is to provide an image file device capable of reproducing high-quality images close to the original images.

Another object of the present invention is to enable designation of image density at the image output stage and change the density without re-inputting the image.

Furthermore, it is possible to specify the image quality at the image output stage, and the image quality can be changed without any manual effort.

[Means to solve the problem]

The image file device of the present invention captures an image, compresses and records the captured image information, searches for the recorded image information, displays it, and prints it out. The present invention includes a first means for capturing and recording two types of image information of the image, and a second means for reading out the image information of the multivalued image and specifying density for displaying and printing. It is a feature.

[Effect]

According to the present invention, when an original image is captured, a multivalued image is captured simultaneously with a binary image, and the multivalued image is reproduced as necessary, so that deterioration in image quality can be prevented.

〔Example〕

The present invention will be described in more detail below with reference to embodiments shown in the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, image information such as a drawing is read by a scanner 3. As shown in FIG. The read image information is corrected for illuminance, normalized, sliced at a predetermined slice level, binarized, and converted into black and white information in the scanner control circuit 4. The binarized image information is sent to the image processing section 6. Title information for the binarized image information can be created, for example, by pressing a key on the keyboard l, and the input title information is sent to the image processing unit 6 via the keyboard control circuit 2, and the image information is It can be associated with

The operation mode is designated using the keyboard 1. When an instruction to display an image is input from the keyboard 1, it is sent to the display memory 11 via the keyboard control section 2, image processing section 6, and display control circuit 10, and displayed on the display section 12. Furthermore, when an instruction to print an image is input from the keyboard 1, this instruction is sent from the keyboard control section 2 to the image printing control section 13.
The image information sent from is output to the printing section 14. Furthermore, when a writing instruction is input manually from the keyboard 1, the image information (binary black and white information) output from the image processing unit 6 is encoded and compressed in the image compression/decompression circuit 7, thereby saving the writing area. is measured.

This compressed image information is written to the optical disc 9 by the optical disc control circuit 8 along with the title information input manually from the keyboard 1 or the like. Since the title information is code information, the amount of information is very small compared to the image information. When writing to the optical disc 9, image information and title information are written in separate areas, and the address where the image information is written is added to the title information.
When the title information is searched and a match is found, it becomes possible to easily and quickly obtain the image information from the storage address of the image information located after the title information. Further, even in the worst case, if the entire title information area is searched, the desired image information can be searched.

Next, Figure 2 (a) to (f) regarding the handling of multivalued information.
Explain using. When the human image 16 shown in FIG. 2(a) is scanned and captured, one scan 17 shown in the figure corresponds to one day of the analog waveform shown in FIG. 2(b). When this analog waveform 18 is sliced at a slice level of 20, it becomes black and white binary information shown in FIG. 2(C). Figure 2 0)
) The analog waveform 18 shown in ) is sliced at slice levels 19 and 20.
．． When sliced at 21, 22, 23, and 24 and binarized, multivalued information shown in FIG. 2(d) is obtained. In FIG. 2(d), the numbers in parentheses indicate slice levels. As is clear from FIG. 2(a), it is possible to store information close to the read analog waveform 18. Multivalued information is expressed in two dimensions, for example, as shown in Figure 2(e), and black information is expressed in three dimensions for each pixel.
When expressed in bits, it can be expressed as shown in FIG. 2(f). Information obtained by each scan is similarly stored. That is, when capturing an image from the scanner 3 shown in FIG.
At the same time as converting into value information, the multi-value information control circuit 5 is used to take in the multi-value information. Here, the multi-value information control circuit 5
The analog waveform converted into an electrical signal by the scanner 3 is corrected for illuminance, sliced at a plurality of predetermined slice levels, and converted into multivalued information close to analog information. The binary information and the multivalued information are each compressed separately by an image compression/decompression circuit 7. As this compression method, a method is used in which continuous white information and continuous black information are coded and compressed. An example of such a method is the MH method (Modified Hoffman method).

The compressed image information is linked to the title information input from the keyboard I and written to the image information area of the optical disc 9. In this case, it is necessary to store the compressed information of the binary information and the compressed information of the multi-valued information in separate areas of the image information area of the optical disc 9 in order to improve the processing speed of searching and printing. That is, by managing binary information and multi-value information separately, it becomes possible to process the binary information and multi-value information in different image information areas, and it is possible to improve the speed of image retrieval.

Note that normally, when searching, displaying, or printing, binary information is processed.

When printing an image, when the print key is pressed from keyboard 1,
The keyboard control section 2 instructs the image processing section 6 to perform image printing processing. Furthermore, the title information of the image is inputted from the keyboard 1, and the title information of each image is read out from the optical disk 9 and compared with the inputted title information. If the title information matches, the optical disc control unit 8 reads out the image information from the storage area of the optical disc 9 for image information linked to the image information of the title, and the image information compression and decompression circuit 7 restores it to black and white binary information. Ru.

The restored binary information is controlled by a printing control section 13 and printed out from a printing section 14. That is, the image shown in FIG. 2(a) is printed as shown in FIG. 3(a). When printing, if you want to change the print quality such as a lighter or darker image, in the conventional technology it was necessary to change the image capture conditions and re-enter the image, but in this embodiment, multi-value information can be changed. Since it is written on the optical disc 9, the image quality can be changed without re-inputting. That is, by specifying multi-value information when specifying title information, it is possible to search for multi-value information corresponding to the title information. The multivalued information is read from the optical disc 9 by the optical disc control circuit 8 and restored by the image compression and restoration circuit 7. The restored image information is sent to the image processing section 6, and image information for l images is stored in the memory. The image is cut out according to the density specified by the keyboard 1, sent to the print control circuit 13, and printed by the printing section 14.

In other words, by specifying the density from the keyboard l,
Figure 3(b). It becomes possible to obtain an image with the quality shown in (C) without re-inputting it.

As shown in FIGS. 4(a) and 4(b), when photographic information is recorded as multivalued information on the optical disc 9, the multivalued information can be read out from the optical disc 9 in response to instructions from the keyboard 1, and the image can be regenerated manually. It is possible to print images of various densities without performing

Once multilevel information is obtained, a clear photographic image quality as shown in FIG. 4(I) can be obtained by dithering (a method of representing a fixed area (4 bits x 4 bits) by black and white distribution).

The principle of the dither method in FIG. 5 is shown. The dithering method is used when it is necessary to express light and shade in multiple stages, such as in photographs, by dividing white to black into 16 stages and adjusting the density accordingly, as shown in Figure 5(a). As an expression, for example, Figure 5 (
As shown in b), this method realizes a fixed area of 4 bits x 4 bits by arranging white and black. For white, all 4x4 bits are "1" as shown in Figure 5(c), and for black, all 4x4 bits are "O" as shown in Figure 5(d).
, gray is changed from white to black by gradually changing the amount of "1" as shown in Figure 5(C). As shown in FIG. 6, if the photo area 30 is a part of the image, the photo area 30 can be specified by using a mouse or the like connected to the keyboard 1 as shown in FIG. It is possible to output only the photographed head area 30 using the dither method. In this case as well, instead of re-inputting the image from the scanner, the title information is used to
This can be achieved by searching for the desired multivalued information from . The read multivalued information is sent to the image processing 6, and the photo area 30 shown in FIG. 6 is captured using the dither method, and the other areas are captured using the binary method, thereby making it possible to obtain an image with the desired image quality. ．． Searching and displaying can be done in the same way as printing. As explained above, storing image information as multilevel information means storing it in a state closer to the original image, making it possible to reproduce the original image, and making it possible to discard the original image. Become.

Furthermore, by increasing the line density and performing binarization without using multilevel information, it is possible to faithfully restore the image. When reading the original copy shown in Figure 7(a),
The image shown in c) is read at a certain linear density; if it is read at twice the reading speed of the image shown in Fig. 7 (b), it will be read at twice the linear density; An image with the quality shown in 0 is obtained. By increasing the linear density in this way, it is possible to improve the reproducibility to a state close to the original image. However, the amount of information increases exponentially as the square of the linear density. On the other hand, the processing speed becomes slower. Therefore, for images that do not require detailed content, search for images with low line density to increase processing speed.
When detailed information is required, it is efficient to re-enter the title information from the keyboard 1, search for information with high line density, and check the details.

〔Effect of the invention〕

According to the present invention, the original drawing can be faithfully reproduced as a multivalued image or with a high linear density, so the original drawing can be disposed of, and a space-saving drawing management system can be realized. Further, according to the present invention, when printing an image, it is possible to change the density and output the image without re-inputting the image, and it is also possible to change the image quality.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Explanatory diagrams showing examples of when images are expressed using binary information and multi-value information, Figures 3 (a), (B), (C) and Figure 4 (a)
．． (b) is an explanatory diagram showing an example of reproducing the original image, and Fig. 5 (a)
), (b), (C), and (d) are explanatory diagrams showing the principle of image representation using the dither method, Fig. 6 is an explanatory diagram when a photograph exists in a part of the image, and Fig. 7 (a) , (b), (
C) is an explanatory diagram showing an example of capturing an image by changing the 1is density. l...Keyboard, 2...Keyboard control section, 3.
...Scanner, 4...Scanner control circuit, 5...Multi-level information control circuit, 6...Image processing section, 7...Image compression and decompression circuit, 8...Optical disk control circuit, lO...・
Display control circuit, 11... Display memory, l2... Display unit, 13... Print control circuit, 14... Print unit. Figure 2(a)

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An image file device that captures an image, compresses and records the captured image information, searches for the recorded image information, displays it, and prints out the image. The first step is to capture and record information.
An image file device comprising: means for reading the image information of the multivalued image, and second means for specifying density when displaying or printing.