JPH05191659A - Image processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide a color image transmitter for transferring received images to an image processor provided with a monochromatic plotter when the images received by the color image transmitter are monochromatic images or color images for which it is not necessary to be outputted as color images. CONSTITUTION:When the color image transmitter receives the monochromatic images, those received images are temporarily stored in a secondary storage device 3. Then, they are transferred to the other image transmitter provided with the monochromatic plotter. In the case of color images for which it is not necessary to be outputted as color images, those received images are temporarily stored in the secondary storage device 3. Then, those images are converted by a CODEC part 5 so as to be outputted as monochromatic images, and transferred to the other image transmitter equipped with the monochromatic plotter.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image processing device,
More specifically, the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus such as a color facsimile apparatus capable of transmitting and receiving a color image.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A color image processing apparatus such as a color facsimile apparatus has a color image output means such as a color plotter for printing a color image. There are various methods of outputting this color image using ink jet, toner, film, etc., but all of them are designed to reproduce the color image by combining the three primary colors of cyan, magenta, and yellow. .. On the other hand, some image processing apparatuses such as facsimile apparatuses have recently been provided with a function of directly transferring received data to another image processing apparatus.
For example, when the received data is retransmitted, certain transfer information, for example, the function of the transfer destination facsimile device is input, and image data that can respond to the function of the transfer destination facsimile device is input. A facsimile device which inputs the image data to the image memory and directly transfers the image data input to the image memory (JP-A-1-195761),
A facsimile device (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 64-77276) or the like which adds identification information to a received image and accumulates it in a memory and transfers the received image to another facsimile device based on this identification information. In this respect, also in the color facsimile apparatus or the like, when the received color image is transferred, the transfer image is also transferred as it is.

[0003]

However, an image processing apparatus having a color image output means such as a color plotter,
Even if the received image is a monochrome image, it is output to the color plotter in the same manner. The output to this color plotter uses toner of three colors to output one black color, so materials such as 2 toner cannot be used effectively compared to the output to the monochrome plotter, and the cost at the time of output is high. There was the problem of becoming expensive. In addition, even if a color image is received and it is not necessary to output it to a color plotter, even if it is considered to output it to another image processing device, since the transferred image is a color image, the image processing device equipped with only a monochrome plotter Even if the received image data was transferred, it could not be output as a monochrome image.

Therefore, a first object of the present invention is to, when an image processing apparatus having an output means such as a color plotter receives a monochrome image, convert the monochrome image into another image having an output means such as a monochrome plotter. An object of the present invention is to provide an image processing device that enables transfer to a processing device. Further, a second object of the present invention is that even when an image processing apparatus having an output means such as a color plotter receives a color image, there is no need to output the color image to a color plotter or when the color image is close to a monochrome image. When it is determined that the image processing apparatus is capable of converting the image data into a monochrome image data and transferring the image to another image processing apparatus having an output unit such as a monochrome plotter.

[0005]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a transmitting / receiving means for transmitting / receiving data via a communication line, and an output means for printing out image data received by the transmitting / receiving means as a color image. An image judging means for judging whether or not the image data received by the transmitting / receiving means is a monochrome image, and temporarily storing the received image data when the received image is judged to be a monochrome image by the image judging means. The first object is achieved by providing the image processing device with an image storage device for storing the image data and an image transfer device for transferring the image data stored in the image storage device to another image processing device having a monochrome image output device. To do.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a transmitting / receiving means for transmitting / receiving data via a communication line, an output means for printing out the image data received by the transmitting / receiving means as a color image, and a color image received by the transmitting / receiving means. Color difference component determining means for determining whether or not the color difference component is less than or equal to a certain threshold value, and when the color difference component of the received image is determined to be less than or equal to the certain threshold value by this color difference component determination means, An image storage unit for temporarily storing the received image data, an image conversion unit for converting the color image data stored in the image storage unit into image data of a monochrome image, and an image data converted by the image conversion unit. The second object is achieved by providing the image processing apparatus with an image transfer means for transferring to another image processing apparatus having a monochrome image output means. According to a third aspect of the invention, the image processing apparatus according to the second aspect is provided with a threshold value setting means for setting and changing the threshold value to an arbitrary value, thereby achieving the second object. According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, the image processing apparatus according to the first aspect, the second aspect, or the third aspect outputs the monochrome image data or the color image data received by the transmitting / receiving means to the output means or the monochrome image output means. In order to achieve the first and second objects, a selection means for selecting whether to transmit to another image processing apparatus having the above is provided.

[0006]

According to the image processing apparatus of the present invention, for example, it is determined whether the image data received via the communication line is a monochrome image. If it is determined that the image data is a monochrome image, the received image data is saved as an image. Temporarily save to the means. Then, the stored image data is transferred by the image transfer means to another image processing apparatus having a monochrome image output means. According to another aspect of the image processing device of the present invention, for example, it is determined whether or not the color difference component of the color image data received via the communication line is less than or equal to a certain threshold value, and the color difference component determination means determines the color difference component. When it is determined that the received image data is equal to or less than the value, the received image data is temporarily stored in the image storage means. Then, the stored image data is converted into image data of a monochrome image by the image conversion means, and transferred by the image transfer means to another image processing apparatus having a monochrome image output means. In the image processing apparatus according to the third aspect, the threshold value determined by the color difference component determination means included in the image processing apparatus according to the second aspect is set and changed to an arbitrary value by the threshold value setting means. In the image processing device according to claim 4, in the image processing device according to claim 1, claim 2 or claim 3, the received monochrome image data or color image data is output to an output means or a monochrome image output means is output. Select whether to transmit to another image processing apparatus that has the same.

[0007]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment in which the image processing apparatus of the present invention is applied to a color facsimile machine will be described in detail below with reference to FIGS. As shown in Figure 1,
The system controller 1 controls activation of each component and state management, and includes a CPU (central processing unit), a memory, a bus interface, and the like. It also controls the operation unit 2 and the secondary storage device 3 described below and transfers data to and from these devices. The operation unit 2 is a liquid crystal display unit capable of displaying various keys for starting the facsimile apparatus, inputting a telephone number, and operating other facsimile functions, operating procedures, and various displays regarding the state of the machine, and other displays. It is composed of devices and the like. The secondary storage device 3 is used for storing encoded data, storing registered telephone numbers, and the like, and is composed of a magnetic disk or the like. Further, the system controller is connected to other units described later by a system bus 11 such as a data bus.

The scanner unit 4 is a device for inputting image data from a document, and is constituted by a known technique such as a light source, a photoelectric conversion element, an A / D converter, a bus interface and the like. Here, the scanner unit 4 is designed to read RGB three colors at the same time by using a filter to obtain color image data, and the read RGB data is sent to an image memory unit 6 described later via a bus interface. Be done. The codec unit 5 transfers image data to and from the image memory 6, and compresses and expands image data based on the well-known JPEG method. The data compressed by the codec unit 5 is transmitted / received to / from the ISDN interface unit 8 described below via the bus interface.

FIG. 2 shows the configuration of the codec section 5. As shown in FIG. 2, the codec section 5 includes a CPU
12, memory 13, DSP 14 (Digital Signal P
rocessor: Processor for high-speed calculation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) 14,
It is composed of a DMA 15, a FIFO (First In First Out) 16, a bus interface 17, and the like. FIG. 3 shows a flow of operations of the codec section 5. That is,
The DMA 15 transmits / receives RGB image data to / from the image memory unit 6. The RGB image data received by the DMA 15 is supplied to the DSP 14, subjected to color conversion processing (step 20), and converted into YCbCr image data. Further, a DCT calculation (step 21) described later and a quantization process (step 22) are performed. afterwards,
The quantized image data is Huffman-encoded by the CPU 12 (step 23) and becomes compressed data. On the other hand, at the time of decoding, RGB image data is obtained by the reverse processing described above. Note that CP control is used for overall sequence control, DMA15 and DSP14 control, and DC component extraction.
U12 does. The FIFO 16 is a means for causing the DSP 14 to operate without delay when transmitting / receiving image data by the DMA 15, and the memory 13 causes the CPU 12 to temporarily store programs and code data.

Here, the DCT operation means Discrete Cosin
e Transform (discrete cosine transform), which is a kind of orthogonal transform, is applied to the still image coding system and is currently used in IS.
O and CCITT are promoting standardization. The two-dimensional DCT will be described below. The pixels forming the image are divided into an 8 × 8 matrix having 8 pixels in the vertical direction and 8 pixels in the horizontal direction, and the value of each pixel is f (i, j) (where i = 0 to 7).
, J = 0 to 7), the DCT mapping F (u, v)
Is expressed by the following equation (1). F (u, v) = [4 · C (u) · C (v) / (N · N)] · ΣΣf (i, j) · cos [(2, i + 1) · u, π / (2, N) )] · Cos [(2, j + 1) · v · π / (2 · N)] (1) Here, the addition range of both Σ is i = 0 to (N−1) and j.
= 0 to (N-1), u = 0 to 7 and v = 0 to 7. This is called a DCT coefficient and is given by an 8 × 8 coefficient matrix. Where C (W) is C (W) = 1 / √2 (when W = 0) or C (W) = 1 (when W = 1, 2, ..., N −1) ..

The inverse DCT (IDCT) is obtained by the following equation (2). f (i, j) = ΣΣC (u) · C (v) · F (u, v) · cos [(2, i + 1) · u · π / (2 · N)] · cos [(2 · j + 1) ) · V · π / (2 · N)] (2) Here, the addition range of both Σ is u = 0 to (N−1) and v
= 0 to (N-1). 8 × 8 coefficient matrix F (u,
v) corresponds to the conversion coefficient of a higher frequency component of the spatial frequencies included in the image as u and v increase,
F (0, 0) corresponds to the coefficient of the DC component. That is, FIG.
As shown in (A) and (B), the top row corresponds to the coefficient of the horizontal frequency component of the spatial frequency contained in the image in order from the lowest frequency component, and the leftmost column Similarly, among the coefficients of the vertical components, the components with the lowest frequencies correspond in order from the left, and the upper left component corresponds to the coefficient of the DC component of the image. The diagonal portions correspond to the coefficients of the frequency in which the horizontal and vertical lines are superimposed.

The image memory unit 6 includes a bus interface,
A frame buffer configured by a memory for accumulating uncompressed input / output image data. It is used to store the image data read by the scanner unit 4 or the image data output to the plotter unit 7. The plotter unit 7 is configured by a well-known technique such as a DMA, a bus interface, a color ink ribbon, a thermal head, and a paper transport mechanism. Image data is fetched from the image memory unit 6 by DMA, and the color of the color ink ribbon is placed on the paper by the heat of the thermal head according to the color information and printed. ISDN interface section 8
Is an interface circuit for ISDN line and CP
It is composed of a U, a memory, a bus interface and the like.
The ISDN interface unit 8 controls the protocol at the time of communication and transmits / receives the encoded data compressed by the codec unit 5. The communication protocol uses an expanded function of G4 class 1 and adds color coded expression capability.

The CRT interface section 9 includes a CRT 10
It comprises a display memory for displaying, a DMA, a display timing controller, a D / A converter, a bus interface and the like. Data is taken from the image memory unit 6 into the display memory via DMA via the bus interface, converted into an analog signal by the D / A converter, and displayed on the CRT 10.

Next, the operation of the embodiment thus constructed will be described with reference to FIGS. 5 and 6. The system controller unit 1 controls the entire flowchart shown in FIGS. 5 and 6. First, control during transmission will be described. When the transmission instruction is detected from the operation unit 2 (step 1; transmission, step 2), the system controller 1 displays the fact on the operation unit 2 and the CRT interface unit 9 and activates the scanner unit 4 (step 3). ). Then, the scanner unit 4 starts reading an image. Each of the RGB data is simultaneously read by 8 bits and sequentially written in the image memory unit 6 (step 4). At the same time, this image data is CR
It is supplied to the T interface unit 9 and displayed on the CRT 10. This allows the sender to confirm the image data read through the screen. When the image memory unit 6 finishes storing a certain amount of data, the system controller 1 instructs the codec unit 5 to start encoding (step 4). The codec unit 5 takes in image data from the image memory unit 6 and performs an encoding process. The encoded information is
It is sent to the system controller 1 and is once stored in the secondary storage device 3 (step 5). As a result, the processing of the scanner unit 4 and the codec unit 5 and the storage of the secondary storage device are completed (step 6, step 7, step 8).

Next, the system controller 1 is an ISDN.
A transmission start instruction is issued to the interface unit 8 (step 9), and the ISDN interface unit 8 transmits the encoded data via the communication line. When the transmission is completed, the ISDN interface section 8 notifies the system controller 1 of the fact (step 10). When the system controller 1 receives the report of the end of transmission, the system controller 1 displays the fact on the CRT 10 via the operation unit 2 and the CRT interface unit 9 (step 11) and returns to the standby state.

Next, the operation at the time of reception will be described. I
When the SDN interface unit 8 detects an incoming call (step 1; reception), it determines whether the mode is the color mode or the monochrome mode according to a predetermined protocol. Next, the ISDN interface unit 8 notifies the system controller 1 of the fact while performing the image data receiving operation (step 12). The system controller 1 stores the received encoded data in the secondary storage device 3 (step 1
Along with 4), the CRT 10 is instructed to display that it is being received via the operation unit 2 and the CRT interface unit 9 (step 15). If it is determined that the received image is a monochrome image (step 16; Y), the system controller 1 does not activate the codec section 5 and sends the encoded data stored in the secondary storage device to another monochrome plotter. It is transmitted to the image processing apparatus that has it. That is, the system controller 1 issues a transmission start instruction to the ISDN interface unit 8 (step 17), and the ISDN interface unit 8 transmits the encoded data of the monochrome image stored in the secondary storage device 3 via the communication line. (Step 1
8). When the transmission is completed, the ISDN interface section 8 informs the system controller 1 of that fact and returns to the standby state (step 19).

On the other hand, when the color mode is determined in step 16 (step 16; N), the system controller 1 reproduces the image data from the coded data stored in the secondary storage device 3 in order to reproduce the image data. 5 is activated (step 20), and the compressed data is expanded. The decompressed data is expanded in the image memory unit 6. At this time, the codec section 5 uses the system controller 1 for each fixed processing unit (n-line decoding processing).
(Step 21). System controller 1
Displays the decompressed received image on the CRT 10 (step 22). The encoding operation of steps 21 and 22 is repeated until the final line (step 23;
N). When the encoding operation is completed (step 23; Y),
The fact is displayed on the CRT 10 and the operation unit 2 (step 24). At the same time, the codec section 5 causes the DCT coefficient (F (u,
It is determined whether the absolute value of v)) is less than a certain threshold value (TH) (step 25). If it is less than or equal to the threshold value (step 25; Y), the process shifts to step 17, the received image data is converted into monochrome image data, and the monochrome image data is transmitted to the image processing apparatus having the monochrome plotter.

Further, the threshold value can be set by the sender. Even if the DCT coefficient of the color difference component is greater than or equal to the threshold value, if the sender has instructed the output to the monochrome plotter (step 26; Y), the process proceeds to step 17 and is transmitted to the image processing apparatus having the monochrome plotter. To do. Otherwise (step 25; N, step 2
6; N), if output is instructed at the time when all the compressed data are expanded (step 27; Y), the system controller 1 activates its own plotter unit 7 (step 28). The plotter unit 7 reads the image data from the image memory unit 6 and outputs it.
9). When all the processing is completed, the fact is displayed on the operation unit 2 and the CRT 10 (step 30), and the process returns to the standby state.

As described above, according to this embodiment,
When the color facsimile device receives a monochrome image, the received monochrome image can be transferred to another facsimile device having a monochrome plotter without outputting to the plotter of the color facsimile device, and the cost is reduced. be able to. Further, according to the present embodiment, even if a color image is received, even if the color image is close to a monochrome image, the color image can be transferred to another facsimile apparatus, and the cost can be reduced. Further, according to the present embodiment, since the above-mentioned threshold value can be set and changed, the color image output to the monochrome plotter of another facsimile apparatus becomes arbitrary. In addition, according to the present embodiment, even when the operator determines that it is not necessary to output the received color image to the color plotter, the color image can be transferred to another facsimile apparatus, and the cost can be reduced. it can.

[0020]

According to the present invention, when a color image processing device receives a monochrome image, it can be transferred to another image processing device, and the cost can be reduced. Further, even if a color image is received, it is similar to a monochrome image, or when the operator determines that the color plotter does not need to output, the cost can be similarly reduced.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a color facsimile apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a codec section.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a data flow of a codec section.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a DCT operation performed by a DSP that forms a codec section.

FIG. 5 is a part of a flowchart showing an operation of the color facsimile apparatus at the time of reception and transmission.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the rest of the operation at the time of reception and transmission.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 system controller 2 operation unit 3 secondary storage device 4 scanner unit 5 codec unit (encoding device, decoding device) 6 image memory unit 7 plotter unit (output device) 8 ISDN interface unit 9 CRT interface unit 10 CRT 11 system bus

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A transmission / reception unit for transmitting / receiving data via a communication line, an output unit for printing out image data received by the transmission / reception unit as a color image, and image data received by the transmission / reception unit is a monochrome image. Image determining means for determining whether or not the received image is a monochrome image, and image storing means for temporarily storing the received image data when the received image is a monochrome image; An image processing apparatus, comprising: an image transfer unit for transferring the image data thus obtained to another image processing apparatus having a monochrome image output unit. 2. A transmitting / receiving unit for transmitting / receiving data via a communication line, an output unit for printing out image data received by the transmitting / receiving unit as a color image, and a color difference component of the color image received by the transmitting / receiving unit. And a received image when the color difference component of the received image is determined to be less than or equal to a certain threshold value by the color difference component determination means for determining whether or not is less than or equal to a certain threshold value. Image saving means for temporarily saving data, image converting means for converting the color image data saved in the image saving means into image data of a monochrome image, and image data converted by the image converting means in a monochrome image output. And an image transfer unit for transferring the image to another image processing device having the unit. 3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising a threshold value setting means for setting and changing the threshold value to an arbitrary value. 4. A selection means for selecting whether to output the monochrome image data or the color image data received by the transmission / reception means to the output means or to transfer to another image processing apparatus having the monochrome image output means. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, claim 2 or claim 3, wherein: