JPH04290378A - Color picture forming system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce instruction codes and data for picture data. CONSTITUTION:Based on the picture information and picture position information, the picture is displayed on a transmission liquid crystal module board 600, and the picture to be displayed on the transmission liquid crystal module board 600 and the original picture on the transmission liquid crystal module board 600 are read by optically scanned by a digital color copying machine 1. Based on the picture information of the read synthetic picture, the synthetic picture is formed on a medium to be recorded.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

[Industrial Application Field] The present invention optically scans and synthesizes an image on an optical device having a transmission function such as a liquid crystal and an ordinary original, and outputs the synthesized image on a recording medium. The present invention relates to a color image forming system.

0002

[Prior Art] In recent years, according to codes and instructions defined to express documents, images, etc. created and converted on a computer, they are analyzed inside a printer and images are developed according to the resolution of the printer. The number of printers that print is increasing.

0003

However, in the conventional example described above, there is a problem in that the number of instruction codes and data becomes extremely large when handling image data.

It is an object of the present invention to solve the above-mentioned problems and to provide an optical input unit such as a copying machine or a scanner that can process images based on codes and instructions that define documents and images created for printers. An object of the present invention is to provide a color image forming system capable of synthesizing natural images from various sources as a background.

[0005]

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a transmissive display panel and a display control means for displaying an image on the transmissive display panel based on image information and image position information. , a reading means for optically scanning and reading the image displayed on the transmissive display panel and the original image placed on the transmissive display panel, and image information of the composite image read by the reading means. and forming means for forming a composite image on a recording medium based on the image forming apparatus.

[0006]

[Operation] In the present invention, an image is displayed on a transparent display panel by a display control means based on image information and image position information,
The image displayed on the transmissive display panel and the original image placed on the transmissive display panel are optically scanned and read by the reading means, and the image is formed by the forming means based on the image information of the composite image read by the reading means. A composite image is formed on a recording medium.

[0007]

Embodiments Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

Embodiment 1 FIG. 1 shows the configuration of a color image forming system according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention.

[0009] This system includes a digital color copying machine 1,
Image storage synthesis device 200 and control computer 400
It is composed of. The digital color copying machine 1 has a digital color image reading section (hereinafter referred to as a color scanner) 100 in its upper part, and a digital color image printing section (hereinafter referred to as a color printer) that prints out a digital color image in its lower part. It has 300.

FIG. 2 shows the configuration of the color scanner 100 shown in FIG. 1.

The color scanner 100 of this embodiment is a device that converts color image information of a read document using color separation means and a photoelectric conversion element composed of a CCD or the like. For 100 color scanners, exposure system controller 1
03, the document table (liquid crystal module board 600
) The document above is color-separated by a contact type CCD line sensor for each color of R, G, and B, and converted into dot-sequential analog image signals. This analog image signal is converted into an 8-bit digital image signal for each color by an A/D converter, and each color of RGB, which is luminance, is output as a line sequential signal. This image signal (digital) is processed by the image processing unit 102 from the brightness levels of R, G, and B to the densities of C, M, and Y.
, Bk to the levels corresponding to the toner amounts of the four colors. At the same time, the color correction section calculates, combines, scales,
Various image processing such as movement is performed. printer 300
In the section, the sent C, M, Y, Bk digital image signals are converted into lighting signals for the semiconductor laser section, the laser is controlled by the laser drive section 310, and the laser lighting signals are converted into lighting signals for the semiconductor laser section. Output as a pulse width corresponding to the level. The lighting level of the laser is 256 levels (corresponding to 8 bits). In accordance with this digital image signal to be output, the color image is limited to each CMYK color, and each photosensitive drum 315 is sequentially exposed to light in a digital dot format, developed by a developing section 314, and transferred to paper by a plurality of transfer sections 314. This is an electrophotographic laser beam printer in which the image is transferred by the printer and finally fixed by the fixing unit 322.

The color scanner 100 and color printer 300 can also function as a digital color copying machine 1 by controlling the color printer 300 under the control of the color scanner 100.

A glass plate is normally used for the document table of the color scanner 100, but in this system, as shown in FIG. 2, a liquid crystal module plate 600 is used. This liquid crystal module board 600 is normally used as a document table on the transparent glass surface of a copying machine, and when an original image is set on the liquid crystal module board 600 and the copy start key is pressed, the image from the color scanner 100 is transferred according to the process described above. reading, image processing, exposure on the color printer 300,
An image is formed and output through the processes of development, transfer, and fixing.

FIG. 3 shows the image storage and synthesis apparatus 200 shown in FIG.
The configuration is shown below.

This device includes an image controller 210 that controls the entire image storage and synthesis device 200, and a PDL (P
ageDescriptionLanguage
e) PDL controller 2 that performs analysis and image development
20 and an image memory 230 for registering the developed image.

Further, this image memory 230 is developed by a liquid crystal controller 260 on a liquid crystal device 600 on the document table of the copying machine.

The interfaces include an external interface controller 250 for exchanging image data and commands with the control computer 400, and a digital color interface controller for exchanging image data and commands with the digital color copying machine.

If a font is specified when developing the image, the PDL controller 220 uses the font R.
It is possible to extract outline font data from within the OM 240 and develop the image to a specified size.

FIG. 3 shows the configuration of computer 400 shown in FIG. 1.

The control computer 400 includes an interface controller 420 for exchanging image data and instructions with the image storage and synthesis device 200, a CPU 405 for central control, and a disk for temporary registration of image data and storage of various data. A controller 450, a hard disk 451, a main memory 460, and a mouse 431 and a keyboard 441 as means for inputting instructions from the operator.
Color display 412 for layout, editing, and menu display, display memory 411, display controller 410, and display memory 4
It is composed of an image editing controller that performs image layout and editing on 11.

Next, the image forming procedure will be explained.

On the computer 400, DTP (desk top publishing) software is loaded from the hard disk 451 onto the main memory 460 and executed, allowing the user to write documents using the mouse 431 and keyboard 441. This can be done directly while checking the image layout, allowing you to create any document image. Therefore, the document image expanded on the display memory 441 is displayed through the display 411, and finally, the information of the laid out document image is used by the device driver software in the ROM to define the document and image laid out and created. PDL (PageDescript)
ion Language) code. Here, the computer 400 communicates with an external interface controller of the image storage/synthesizing device 200 for the interface controller 420 to perform PDL processing.
The code is transferred to the image storage and synthesis device 200 side.

The image storage and synthesis device 200 analyzes the transferred PDL code. Depending on this analysis result, P
As shown in FIG. 5, the DL controller develops the same image created on the computer 400 on the image memory 230 in accordance with the resolution of the scanner/printer. The completed image on the image memory 230 is transferred to the liquid crystal controller 260 based on instructions from the image controller 210 of the image storage and synthesis device 200.
Accordingly, ON/OFF is determined corresponding to each image pixel on the image memory 230, and each image pixel of the above-mentioned liquid crystal module board corresponding to the position is turned ON/OFF to generate an image on the liquid crystal module board. . This liquid crystal functions as a shutter, with the pixels in the transparent areas being white and the non-transparent areas being black.

The PDL image data thus formed on the liquid crystal module board 600 is partially formed as text and partially as an illustration image, and by matching the scanner resolution of the copying operation, Get high quality input. When an image is formed on the liquid crystal module board 600, the image controller 210 of the image storage and composition device 200 sends a command to start scanning to the copying machine via the copying machine interface 270 connected to the copying machine. On the digital color copying machine 1 side, the above-described copying process is executed in accordance with the instruction to start the scanning operation from the image storage/synthesizing device 200, and the PDL image formed on the liquid crystal device 600 is output.

Furthermore, since the image of the liquid crystal module board 600 created as described above can be maintained on the liquid crystal as it is, in this state, a reflective original is set on the liquid crystal module board 600, and the image is displayed on the CCD. By scanning with the contact sensor, image information such as characters formed on the liquid crystal module board 600 and image information placed on the reflective document table are used as a background image.
It becomes possible to synthesize and output. Non-transparent parts corresponding to characters and the like formed on the liquid crystal module board 600 turn black.

[0026] The original placed on the reflective original table can be used not only as a background image but also to create a partial inset image by using the entire original table as described above. For example, as shown in FIG. 5, when inserting two photographs into a text, you can visually check the document display based on the document data from the computer 400 held on the LCD module board, and photos, etc. are laid out and set at appropriate positions on the liquid crystal module board 600, and as described above, the image is developed by executing the copying operation using the copy start key or by executing the PDL code or control code from the computer 400. It is possible to combine and output the document image and the image of the reflective original laid out in it.

Furthermore, in this embodiment, the computer 400
Although an example of a programmable type image control command such as PDL has been described, it can also be applied to a character code control code type. The character code data sent from the computer 400 is temporarily stored on the RAM 212 of the image recording and synthesizing apparatus 200 from the external interface 420.

First, the stored character data is sequentially checked for control system codes or simple character codes. As a result of the check, if the code is a control system code, the operation is performed based on the processing of the control system code on the ROM. For example, in the case of a character size change control code, the code following the control code is the code that means the character size, and the font data corresponding to the subsequent basic character size is stored in the font ROM 24 as a bitmap font.
The image is loaded from 0 and expanded onto the image memory 230. Also, in the case of the image control code, first,
Various processes such as specifying the image data size and then sending actual image data as binary data are possible.

Embodiment 2 In comparison with Embodiment 1, this embodiment differs in the structure of the liquid crystal module board and the structure of the image storage and synthesis device. In Example 1, one liquid crystal module plate 600 was used, but in this example, two transmissive liquid crystal modules 600 and 601 were used on the glass surface on the document table. Therefore, by creating images of different processing on each liquid crystal module, it is possible to synthesize and output the images.

FIG. 6 shows the configuration of an image storage and synthesis device 700 of this embodiment. In the case of this embodiment, document data is laid out on the computer 400 as in the first embodiment, and in addition to the laid out PDL information,
Information such as images and illustrations drawn on the 00 is also converted into PDL and sent to the image storage synthesis device 200 via the interface, and the PDL code of the document data sent within the image storage synthesis device 200 and the image/illustration are converted. The image controller 210 instructs the PDL controller 220 to develop PDL codes such as on the image memory 230 and image memory 231, respectively, and at the same time, the liquid crystal controller 260 instructs the PDL controller 220 to develop the PDL codes such as The liquid crystal controller 261 reflects the developed image on the liquid crystal module board 600.

The image controller 210 of the image storage and composition apparatus 200 is connected to the digital color copying machine 1 and sends a scan start command via the copying machine interface 270. As a result, the digital color copying machine 1 reads the multiplexed images of the liquid crystal modules, executes the same copying process as in Example 1, and outputs a composite image of documents and illustrations on the two liquid crystal module boards. do.

Also in this case, by placing a reflective original on the multiple liquid crystal module plates 600 and 601 and composing them as in the first embodiment, it is also possible to output three images in a composite manner.

Embodiment 3 This embodiment differs from Embodiment 1 in the configuration of the image storage and synthesis apparatus. In this embodiment, one image storage/synthesis device 800 connects two digital color copying machines and the liquid crystal module boards 600-1 and 600-1 set in each.
600-2 was controlled. The configuration of the image storage and synthesis device 800 is shown in FIG.

As in the first embodiment, images such as texts and illustrations created on the computer 400 and converted into PDL codes are sent to the external interface controller 2.
50, and is temporarily stored in the RAM 212. Then, the PDL controller 220 analyzes the PDL and develops the same image created by the computer on the image memory 230 in accordance with the resolution of the scanner/printer.

Here, two digital color copying machines are connected to the image storage and synthesis device 800, and a liquid crystal module plate 600-1 is installed on the glass surface of each document table.
, 600-2 are set, and a liquid crystal controller 260-1, 26 controls each liquid crystal module board.
0-2 are also prepared on each digital color copying machine side. The interface and liquid crystal control section of each digital color copying machine are connected to the image storage and synthesis device 80.
It is connected by a linking controller 280 to a copying machine interface 270 in 0.

As mentioned above, the contents of the image memory 230, which is an image developed from the PDL code, are transferred by the linking controller 280 to the liquid crystal controller of each digital color copying machine connected to the image storage and synthesis device. images can be formed on the respective liquid crystal module plates 600-1 and 600-2. Then, by setting different reflective originals on the created LCD module board, images with different backgrounds and the same document image are combined and output for each digital color copier using the same process as in Example 1. can do.

[0037] This makes it possible to simultaneously obtain a composite image with a plurality of different background patterns.

[0038]

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, according to the present invention,
The configuration as described above has the effect of reducing the number of instruction codes and data when handling image data.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of Embodiment 1 of the present invention.

2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the digital color copying machine 1 shown in FIG. 1. FIG.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the image storage and synthesis device 200 shown in FIG. 1;

4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of the computer 400 shown in FIG. 1. FIG.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram illustrating a method of partially fitting an image.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an image storage and synthesis device 700 according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an image storage and synthesis device 800 according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Digital color copying machine 100 Digital color image reading section 200 Image storage and composition device 300 Digital color image printing section 400 Computer 600 Liquid crystal module board

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A transmissive display panel, a display control means for displaying an image on the transmissive display panel based on image information and image position information, an image displayed on the transmissive display panel, and the transmissive display panel. a reading means for optically scanning and reading a document image placed on the recording medium; and a forming means for forming a composite image on a recording medium based on image information of the composite image read by the reading means. A color image forming system characterized by: 2. The color image forming system according to claim 1, wherein the transmissive display panel is a transmissive liquid crystal display panel.