JPH05229176A - Image treatment device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To increase drastically a number of stages of a settable and variable magnifying power, by providing a variable resolution output part which puts out data stored in an image memory by converting into a selected resolution. CONSTITUTION:A soft variable magnifying part 15 puts in a selected signal 14 from a variable magnifying power selecting part 13 and image data 11 performs thinning-out or interpolation treatment according to a variable manifying power decided by that. Similarly a font data memory part 16 puts in a signal 14 from a selecting part 13, font data corresponding to the variable magnifying power decided by that is selected and transferred to an image memory 17. Then decision of output resolution of a resolution variable output part 20 is performed by a method wherein the signal 14 is applied to a resolution changeover control part 18 from the selecting part 13, signal 19 is put out from the control part 18 by corresponding to a selected variable magnifying power and resolution of the output part 20 is changed over by the signal 19. After decision of the resolution like this, the image data stored in the memory 17 is obtained as a designated output image 21 of the variable magnifying power.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for a laser printer or the like, which is capable of changing the size of an image and outputting the image and changing the output resolution.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when outputting an image with a laser printer scaled, image data of an arbitrary resolution sent from a computer is scaled according to the scaling rate to obtain the output resolution of the printer. The data is thinned out or interpolated (soft scaling), written in the image memory, and output at a predetermined resolution.

However, depending on the scaling factor, the thinning-out or the interpolation process cannot be appropriately performed, so that there is a problem that the scaling factor that can be set is limited to several steps.

A multi-resolution (MR) printer device capable of changing the output resolution is also known. According to this device, for example, an image output at a resolution of 240 dpi in the past is 480
By outputting at a resolution of dpi, it is possible to obtain a reduced image of 50% without performing thinning processing.

However, it is difficult to freely change the output resolution according to an arbitrary scaling factor due to the mechanism of the printer, and the scaling factor is limited to several stages due to the limitation of the image capacity. ..

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION A first object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems and to greatly increase the number of stages of variable magnification that can be set.

A second object is to increase the degree of freedom in selecting a scaling ratio by allowing the scaling ratio to be arbitrarily set from the outside.

A third object is to automatically determine an appropriate combination of soft scaling processing and output resolution according to a designated scaling ratio, so that a higher image quality scaling than that of the conventional one is achieved. This is to obtain a double output image.

[0009]

In order to achieve the first object, in the image processing apparatus according to the present invention, a soft scaling unit for thinning or interpolating original data according to a designated scaling ratio, and the soft scaling unit. An image memory for expanding and storing the data scaled by the unit to a selected resolution and a variable resolution output unit for converting the data stored in the image memory to the selected resolution and outputting the data.

In order to achieve the second object, in addition to the above configuration, a scaling ratio selecting unit for selecting a scaling ratio in the soft scaling unit according to an external command is provided.

In order to achieve the third object, similarly, a resolution switching control unit for switching the resolution of the data output from the variable resolution output unit to a resolution according to the scaling ratio in the soft scaling unit is provided.

[0012]

[Function] The number of steps of the scaling ratio that can be set in the soft scaling unit is N
1. If the number of resolution stages that can be expanded in the image memory is N2 and the number of resolution stages variable in the variable resolution output unit is N3,
It is possible to set (N1 × N2 × N3) scaling factors.

[0013]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Next, one embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example of an image processing apparatus according to the present invention. This image processing apparatus is used by connecting to a data creating apparatus such as a computer, and includes a scaling factor selecting section 13, a software scaling section 15, a font data storage section 16, an image memory 17, a resolution switching control section 18, A variable resolution output unit (printer engine) 20 is provided.

The image data 11 and the character code data 12 in the document created on the computer are sent to the main image processing apparatus by the driver application on the computer side, and the main image processing is performed via the interface section (not shown). Input to the device.

The input image data 11 is converted by the software conversion unit 1 according to the scaling ratio selected by the scaling ratio selection unit 13.
After the data is thinned out or interpolated in 5, the image data is stored in the image memory 17 for storing the image data for one page to be output. The capacity of this image memory 17 is
It has a size corresponding to the maximum resolution in the variable resolution output unit 20. On the other hand, the character code data 12 is the font data storage unit 16 that stores the character image data.
Is input to the image memory 17, converted into character image data according to the character code data 12, and then stored in the image memory 17.

The scaling factor selecting section 13 is based on the scaling factor data 10 input from the operating section, and the soft scaling factor for realizing the scaling output by the scaling factor, and the allocation of the image memory 17 according to it. (Development method) and the output resolution of the variable resolution output unit 20 are selected, and the scaling factor of the image processing apparatus is determined by the combination of these three parameters.

The soft scaling unit 15 receives the selection signal 14 from the scaling selection unit 13 and thins or interpolates the image data 11 according to the scaling ratio determined by the selection signal 14.
Similarly, the font data storage unit 16 includes a scaling ratio selection unit 13
The selection signal 14 is input to select font data according to the scaling ratio determined by the selection signal 14 and transfer it to the image memory 17.

The output resolution of the variable resolution output unit 20 is determined by inputting a selection signal 14 from the scaling ratio selecting unit 13 to the resolution switching control unit 18 and switching from the resolution switching control unit 18 according to the selected scaling ratio. A signal 19 is output, and the switching signal 19 switches the resolution of the variable resolution output unit 20.

After the resolution is determined in this way, the image data stored in the image memory 17 in accordance with the allocation method designated by the selection signal 14 as described above is sequentially sent to the variable resolution output section 20 for visualization output. To be done. That is, the output image 21 with the specified scaling ratio is obtained.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a method of determining the scaling factor performed by the above configuration. In the image processing apparatus, when the original image is scaled to obtain the output image, the soft scaling unit 15, the image memory 17, and the variable resolution output unit 20 can be changed in three places as described above. Therefore, if the number of stages of the scaling factor that can be set in the soft scaling unit 15 is N1, the number of resolution stages that can be expanded in the image memory 17 is N2, and the number of resolutions that can be changed in the variable resolution output unit 20 is N3,
It is possible to set (N1 × N2 × N3) scaling factors.

In the case of the present embodiment, the scaling factors that can be set by the soft scaling unit 15 are 100%, 88%, 80%, 75%, 7
6 steps of 0% and 67%, 3 steps of allocation of the image memory 17 of 240 dpi, 300 dpi and 400 dpi,
Similarly, the variable output resolution of the variable resolution output unit 20 is 24
When the number of steps is 0 dpi, 300 dpi, and 400 dpi, (6 × 3 × 3 = 54) steps of scaling are possible.

The values of the scaling factors indicated by the soft scaling unit 15 are such that when an image is developed in a memory at a certain resolution and is output by a printer engine having the same resolution,
It is the ratio of the size of the output image to the size of the original image. In addition, expanding to a certain dpi in the image memory 17 means that the image memory 17 is allocated for that resolution, and original data is soft-scaled (thinning-out or interpolation processing) at a certain scaling factor and written in the image memory 17. That's what it means.

In this image processing apparatus, the number of stages of scaling in the soft scaling unit 15 is the same as that of the conventional apparatus (six stages in the example of FIG. 2).
However, the number of possible scaling factors for the entire apparatus is increased by (N2 × N3) times (9 in the case of FIG. 2) compared to the conventional case.
Double).

Next, a specific example of determining the scaling factor will be described. Now, assuming that 80% scaling is designated by the input from the operation unit, the following two scaling processing methods can be considered in this image processing apparatus.

The soft scaling unit 15 scales the image by 80%, writes it in the image memory 17 allocated to 240 dpi, and outputs it at a resolution of 240 dpi from the variable resolution output unit 20. 240d after 100% scaling by the soft scaling section 15
It is written in the image memory 17 assigned to pi, and output from the variable resolution output unit 20 at a resolution of 300 dpi.

In the present image processing apparatus, the one having the best image quality is selected from the above two types, and the soft scaling factor,
Determine how to allocate image memory and output resolution. In that case, information about which combination is the best may be described in the table in the scaling factor selecting unit 13.

[0027]

According to the image processing apparatus of the first aspect, the number of stages of variable magnification that can be set is changed as compared with the conventional one by changing the combination of the soft variable magnification processing, the expansion method in the image memory and the output resolution. Can be greatly increased.

According to the image processing apparatus of the second aspect, since the scaling factor can be designated from the outside, the degree of freedom of the scaling factor selected by the user can be increased.

According to the image processing apparatus of the third aspect, an appropriate combination of the soft scaling processing and the output resolution is automatically determined according to the designated scaling ratio. A variable scale output image can be obtained.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example of an image processing apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a method of determining a scaling ratio performed by the configuration of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

 13 scaling ratio selection unit 15 soft scaling unit 16 font data storage unit 17 image memory 18 resolution switching control unit 20 resolution variable output unit

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Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A soft scaling unit for thinning out or interpolating original data according to a designated scaling ratio, and an image memory for expanding and storing the data scaled by the soft scaling unit to a selected resolution. An image processing apparatus, comprising: a variable resolution output section for converting data stored in the image memory into a selected resolution and outputting the resolution. 2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a scaling ratio selecting unit that selects a scaling ratio in the soft scaling unit according to an external command. 3. The resolution switching control unit for switching the resolution of data output from the variable resolution output unit to a resolution according to the scaling ratio in the soft scaling unit. Image processing device.