JPH09147095A - Image recorder - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To reduce the data capacity without losing the necessary information and also to shorten the compression/expansion processing time by compressing photographing image information, pen input image information and character image information in different methods and thereby applying a suitable compression to each image. SOLUTION: A lens 7 and a CCD 23 input the 1st image information (photographing image information), and a touch tablet 13 inputs the 2nd image information (line image information) different from the 1st image information. A digital signal processor 26 applies the JPEG or MPEG compression to the 1st image information, and a CPU 29 compresses the 2nd image information by the run length method. A memory 31 individually records those compressed information. These images are composited on a frame 27 and simultaneously displayed on an LCD 2. The JPEG method, etc., is applied to a photographing image that has a large quantity of data and a high frequency component. The line image information, however, can be least compressed by the run length method and also can be reversibly compressed. Therefore, the omission of the line image information can be prevented despite its expansion.

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 capable of inputting / recording a plurality of different image information and character information.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, various images have been synthesized and processed on a computer. Then, for example, an image captured by a camera or a scanner (hereinafter referred to as a photographed image) is combined with a line image (hereinafter referred to as a line image) input by a user with a mouse or tablet to create a new image. Is widely practiced. And synthesize
The created image is recorded in the recording device, but the video combined here is compressed and recorded and stored by a specific compression method.

[0003]

If the same compression processing is applied to the photographed image information and the line drawing information, some inconveniences occur. For one thing, it is required to compress a photographed image with a large amount of data captured by a camera or a scanner at a compression rate as high as possible from the limited capacity of the recording medium. In such an image, since the high frequency component of the image is small, a method in which the low frequency component is less deteriorated tends to be adopted. Therefore, generally, an irreversible compression method such as a JPEG compression method is often used.

On the other hand, in a line drawing, for example, when a thin line is drawn on a white background, black 10 is displayed beside a pixel of 100% white.
There are 0% of pixels, and many high-frequency components exist at the boundary between the white background and the black line. Therefore, if the line drawing is also subjected to JPEG compression as described above, high frequency components are lost, and there is a problem that, for example, straight line data is irreversibly compressed and gathers or bleeding occurs.

Further, there is a problem that information about characters is lost, such as when a character is input on an image, small characters are hard to read due to block distortion peculiar to JPEG compression. Further, in order to solve these problems, if the compression rate of the image is reduced in order to reduce the deterioration of the high frequency component of the line drawing, the compressed information becomes large, the recording medium becomes large, and the product cost increases. There was a problem.

[0006]

According to the first aspect of the invention, the lens 7 and the CCD 23 for inputting the first image information, and the pen-shaped pointer 15 for inputting the second image information different from the first image information. And the touch tablet 13, the frame memory 27 and the LCD 2 for combining and displaying the first image information and the second image information at the same time, and the first image information J
A digital signal processor 26 for PEG compression or MPEG compression, and a CPU 29 for compressing the second image information by a run length method different from the first compression method.
And a memory 31 for individually recording the compressed information.

According to the second aspect of the invention, the lens 7 and the CCD 23 for inputting the first image information, and the key input device (touch tablet (LCD)) for inputting the character information and generating the code of the character information are drawn. When the keyboard character string is pressed with the pen-shaped pointer 15), the CPU 29 that outputs the character shape as the second image information from the character information, and the frame that simultaneously displays the first image information and the second image information by combining them The memory 27 and the LCD 2, first compression means for compressing the first image information by a first compression method, and the second
The second compression method for compressing the image information of No. 1 by a method different from the first compression method and the memory 31 for individually recording the compressed information are provided.

According to the third aspect of the invention, the lens 7 and the CCD 23 for converting the optical image into electronic first image information.
A touch tablet 13 that generates second image information from the trajectory of the pen-shaped pointer 15, an image processing unit that performs data compression processing on the first and second image information in different compression formats, and each image information individually. And a memory 31 for recording the data.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, first input means for inputting the first image information, second input means for inputting the second image information different from the first image information, and the above Display means for synthesizing and simultaneously displaying the first image information and the second image information, a compression means for compressing the first image information, and the compressed first image information and uncompressed information. And recording means for individually recording the second image information.

According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a first input means for inputting the first image information, a character input means for inputting the character information and generating a code of the character information, and a character input from the character information. Character output means for outputting the shape as second image information, display means for synthesizing and displaying the first image information and the second image information at the same time, and compression means for compressing the first image information. And recording means for individually recording the compressed first image information and the uncompressed second image information.

According to the invention of claim 6, an image pickup means for converting an optical image into electronic first image information, an indicating member,
An input detection means for generating second image information from the trajectory of the pointing member; an image processing means for processing the first and second image information; and a recording means for individually recording each image information, The image processing means is configured to perform data compression processing on only the first image information.

According to the invention of claim 7, first input means for inputting the first image information, character input means for inputting the character information and generating a code of the character information, and character input from the character information. Character output means for outputting the shape as second image information, display means for synthesizing and displaying the first image information and the second image information at the same time, and first compression information for the first image information. A first compressing means for compressing by a method, a second compressing means for compressing the code of the character information, and a record for individually recording the compressed first image information and the code of the compressed character information. And means.

According to an eighth aspect of the present invention, first input means for inputting the first image information, second input means for inputting second image information different from the first image information, and the above A display unit capable of synthesizing the first image information and the second image information and displaying them simultaneously; and a recording unit for individually recording the first image information and the uncompressed second image information. It was

[0014]

Thus, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the first image information is compressed by the first compression method and the second image information is compressed by a method different from the first compression method. I got higher. According to the invention of claim 2, the first image information is compressed by the first compression method, and the second image information representing the shape of the character is compressed by a method different from the first compression method. Efficiency has increased.

Further, in the invention of claim 3, the image processing means converts the optical image obtained by data compression processing of the first image information and the second image information in different compression formats, first image information, By compressing the second image information input from the trajectory of the pointing member in different compression formats, the compression efficiency is improved. Further, according to the invention of claim 4, the first image information having a relatively large amount of information is compressed, and the second image information having a relatively small amount of information is uncompressed, thereby improving the efficiency of compression, and This prevents deterioration of the second image information.

According to the invention of claim 5, the first image information having a relatively large amount of information is compressed and the second image representing the shape of the character is compressed.
By uncompressing the image information of, the compression efficiency is improved. Furthermore, in the invention of claim 6, the compression efficiency is increased by compressing only the first image information obtained by converting the optical image.

According to a seventh aspect of the present invention, the first image information obtained by converting the optical image is compressed by the first compression method, and the code representing the character information is compressed by the second compression method. This increased the compression efficiency. According to the invention of claim 8, whether or not the first image information and the second image information are combined and displayed by separately recording the first image information and the second image information. Can be selected.

[0018]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on an embodiment shown in the drawings. 1 and 2 are schematic views of an electronic still camera according to the present invention. The electronic still camera 1 is equipped with a power switch 10 and a liquid crystal display (hereinafter referred to as LCD) 2 for reproducing a still image and displaying various data. The strobe 5, the finder 6, the taking lens 7, and the release button 8 are related to image recording, and the microphone 3, the earphone jack 4, the recording button 9, and the speaker 12 are related to recording and reproducing sound. The switch button 11 is a switch for the user to perform various settings. In addition, a so-called touch tablet 13 is provided on the surface of the LCD 2 so that when a pen-shaped pointing member (pen-shaped pointer) 15 is touched, the pointed position can be input. The touch tablet 13 is made of transparent resin, and the LCD 2 on the inside can be observed through the touch tablet 13. Further, the electronic still camera 1 can select one of the shooting mode, the pen input mode, and the reproduction mode by switching the changeover switch 14.

The switch 11 is a touch tablet 13
This is a switch for confirming the information input to and recording it in the internal memory 31. FIG. 3 is a circuit block diagram.
The light beam incident from the taking lens 7 forms an image on the CCD 23, passes through a correlated double sampling circuit 24 (denoted as CDS in the drawing), is AD-converted by the A / D converter 25, and then is digital signal processor 26 ( D in the figure
It is compressed by (SP) and is recorded in the memory 31 via the CPU 29 and the interface 30. The voice input from the microphone 3 is AD-converted by the A / D converter 21, compressed by the digital signal processor 26, and converted into C
It is recorded in the memory 31 through the PU 29 and the interface 30. The touch tablet 13 is connected to the CPU 29. Further, the CPU 29 has a frame memory 2
The LCD 2 is connected via 7 and an image can be displayed. Further, the digital signal processor 26
Is connected to the D / A converter 22 and the speaker 12,
It is configured to play audio.

Next, the operation of the electronic still camera will be described. First, the input of voice will be described. The power switch 10 is slid to turn on the power. When the record button 9 is pressed, the voice is input from the microphone 3 and the A / D
It is converted into digital data by the conversion circuit 21 and input to the digital signal processor 26. In the digital signal processor 26, the digitized audio signal is compressed and recorded in the audio information recording area inside the memory 31 via the CPU 29 and the interface 30.

The sound is compressed and recorded by the known PCM method. When the reproduction is performed by the changeover switch 14, the audio information in the memory 31 passes through the interface 30 and the CPU 29, and the DSP 2
6 is expanded and reproduced by the earphones (not shown) connected to the speaker 12 or the earphone jack 4 via the D / A converter 22.

Next, image input will be described. When the power switch 10 is slid and the release button 8 is operated, the subject image is formed by the light flux condensed by the taking lens 7 on the CCD 23 which is the image pickup device. The photoelectrically converted image information is correlated double sampling circuit (CDS in the figure).
24) and converted into digital data by the A / D converter 25. Then, it is compressed by the digital signal processor 26, and the CPU 29 and the interface 3
It is accumulated in the photographed image recording area inside the memory 31 via 0. Here, the compression is performed by a JPEG compression method that combines discrete cosine transform, quantization, and Huffman coding.

If the compression method is suitable for compressing a photographed image, such as a fractal image compression method, JPE is used.
The method is not limited to the G compression method. The information compressed and stored in the memory 31 by operating the changeover switch 14 is an LC provided on the rear surface of the electronic still camera 1.
It can be displayed on D2. The information in the memory 31 is read by the CPU 29 through the interface 30 and expanded by the digital signal processor 26. Then, it is again stored in the frame memory 27 via the CPU 29 and then displayed on the LCD 2. In the case of image information, the expanded image data is stored in the frame memory 27 as a bitmap and displayed. Further, if necessary, bitmap data is sent to the frame memory 27 as a so-called thumbnail image which is thinned and reduced, and the
Displayed as D2.

A strobe 5 and a finder 6 are used as needed for the above-mentioned photographing. A clock circuit for knowing the date and time is built in the CPU 29, and the date and time when the voice information and the image information were recorded can be recorded together with the voice information and the image information. Next, input of information from the touch tablet 13 will be described.

When the touch tablet 13 is pressed by the pointer 15 having a pen shape, the X and Y coordinates of the contact point are CP.
Input to U29. The input X and Y coordinates are CP
It is stored in the buffer memory inside U29,
Then, the data is written in the position corresponding to each point of the X and Y coordinates inside the frame memory 27 and displayed on the LCD 2. As a result, the pointer 15 is as if the LCD 2
The user can feel as if he / she is entering the line directly with the pen.

The color of the line can be selected from black, white, red, blue and the like by a selection switch (not shown). A curved line can be drawn by moving the pointer 15, and a broken line can be drawn by moving the pointer 15 intermittently on the tablet. When the above-mentioned photographed image is already input to the frame memory 27 and displayed on the LCD 2, the line drawing information is combined with the photographed image information on the frame memory 27 and is simultaneously displayed on the LCD 2.

When the switch 11 is pressed after writing with the pointer 15, the information stored in the buffer memory inside the CPU 29 is transferred to the memory 31 via the interface 30.
Is recorded in the line drawing information recording area. Here, the information of the line drawing is only a five-step state of no information, no information, and information such as black, white, red, and blue. Therefore, the run length method is most suitable for compressing such information. The run length method scans a line screen horizontally and
It is a method of encoding the continuous length of each of white, red and blue information and the continuous length of no information. Therefore, according to the run length method, the information of such a line drawing can be compressed to the smallest size and can be reversibly compressed, so that the loss of the information can be eliminated even if it is expanded. In the run length method, scanning may be performed in the vertical direction.

The compression of the line drawing information is not limited to the run length method. Since this line drawing can be combined with the above-described photographed image in the frame memory 27, the user can feel as if the line drawing is overwritten on the photographed image on the LCD 2. However, the photographed image is recorded in the photographed image recording area inside the memory 31, and the line drawing is recorded in the information recording area in the line inside the memory 31 by individual compression methods. Therefore, since the two pieces of information are recorded in different areas, it is possible for the user to delete only the line drawing or the photographed image, and further it is possible to compress each by a separate compression method. Has become.

As described above, the run-length method is suitable for compressing a line drawing which is composed of lines and has many high spatial frequency components. If the line drawing is also compressed by the above-mentioned JPEG compression, the compression efficiency is improved. The amount of information does not get smaller,
Furthermore, it takes time to compress and expand. Furthermore, since the JPEG compression is a lossy compression in which the data does not completely return to the original when compressed and expanded, there is a problem in that information is lost and gathers and bleeding occur. However, since the line drawing is compressed using a run length method different from that of the captured image, it is possible to prevent such a problem from occurring.

Generally, a photographed image has R per pixel.
If each bit of GB has 8 bits, it has an information amount of 24 bits, but in a line drawing, 1 bit per pixel is sufficient for black and white, and 4 bits for 16 colors. However, if you try to JPEG-compress a black-and-white line drawing and a photographed image uniformly, in contrast to a black point of a line drawing which is originally 1 bit, in JPEG compression, a high frequency component of the black point and the surrounding color is generated. It takes a lot of data to represent. Therefore, since the amount of information of the line drawing is much smaller than that of the captured image, it is better to compress the line image and record the captured image in different areas than the uniform JPEG compression of both. Become. Furthermore, it is possible to shorten the compression / expansion processing time by making the line image non-compressed and compressing the captured image and recording them in different areas.

Next, in the present embodiment, it is possible to input characters such as Chinese characters, Roman characters, and numbers, and display their shapes on the LCD 2 at the same time as photographed image information and line drawing information. The handling of the image information representing the shape of the character will be described below. To input character information, trace on the touch tablet 13 with the pointer 15, and from the traced shape, the CPU 29
There is a method to identify and enter characters. Also, a graphic like a keyboard is displayed on the LCD 2, and the pointer 15
There is also a method of inputting character information by selecting a character desired by the user with the touch tablet 13.

The character information input in this way is stored in the CPU 2
It is converted into an ASCII code or a JIS code in 9 and is temporarily recorded in a buffer memory inside the CPU 29. Then, the CPU 29 causes the frame memory 2
An ASCII code or a JIS code is decoded in 7 and is developed and recorded in image information representing the shape of a character.
Displayed on CD2. As a result, when the user observes the LCD 2, the user feels that the characters are displayed. Here, the above-mentioned captured image information and line drawing information are stored in the frame memory 27.
If it has already been recorded in, it will be composited and displayed on the frame memory.

When the switch 11 is pressed, the CPU
The ASCII code or JIS code recorded in the buffer memory inside 29 is compressed by the following method. The ASCII code usually has 8-bit information, but there are no 256 characters actually used. Therefore, compression can be performed by removing unnecessary bits that are not used. Also, although the JIS code has 16-bit information, there is a high probability that characters such as the second JIS kanji will not be used, and if these characters are not used, unnecessary bits are also excluded and the amount of information is compressed. It is possible to

In such compression, JPEG compression or run-length compression has poor compression efficiency and is irreversible.
When compressed by G compression, the character code may not be restored and the correct character may not be displayed. However, with respect to the character code, it is possible to perform efficient compression by eliminating the bits corresponding to the unused Kanji code.

Generally, a photographed image is RG per pixel.
If each color B has 8 bits, it has an information amount of 24 bits, but a character has 8 to 16 bits. Considering the size of one character, the information amount of the ASCII code or JIS code that represents the character is very small compared to the captured image. But,
If the character shape and the photographed image are to be uniformly JPEG-compressed, for example, it is 8 to represent the character shape of 8 × 8 pixels.
For one character that requires only bits, JPEG compression requires a large amount of data to represent the frequency components of the black dots and the surrounding colors. Therefore, the character code should be uncompressed and the captured image should be compressed and recorded in separate areas.
The compression efficiency is better than the uniform JPEG compression of both. Furthermore, it is possible to shorten the processing time of compression / expansion by making the character code uncompressed and compressing the captured image and recording them in different areas.

Further, since the shape of the character requires only a few bits per pixel like a line drawing, the shape of the character may be compressed by the run length method or the like, and the photographed image may be JPEG compressed and recorded in different areas. Good. This makes it possible to increase the compression rate and shorten the compression / expansion processing time. The case of the electronic still camera has been described above. However, in an electronic camera that handles a moving image, a compression method suitable for a moving image such as MPEG compression or MPEG2 compression may be adopted instead of the JPEG compression described above.

[0037]

As described above, according to the present invention, the photographed image information, the pen input image information, and the image information of the character representing the shape of the character are compressed by different compression methods, and thus the compression method suitable for each image It has become possible to apply. As a result, the memory 31 can be stored without losing necessary information.
It has become possible to reduce the amount of data to be recorded in and to shorten the compression / decompression processing time.

Further, in the present invention, the photographed image information is compressed,
The pen input image information and the character information representing the shape of the character are separately recorded as uncompressed so that the amount of data stored in the memory 31 can be reduced without losing necessary information and the processing time for compression / expansion can be reduced. It has become possible to shorten. In addition, by separately recording the first image information and the second image information, the first image information and the second image information are recorded.
It is possible to select whether or not to display the image information by combining with the image information. Furthermore, by individually recording, when the image information of either the first image information or the second image information is no longer needed, only the unnecessary image information can be erased.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an image recording apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the inside of the image recording apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a circuit block diagram of an image recording apparatus according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 ... Image recording device 2 ... LCD 3 ... Microphone 4 ... Earphone terminal 5 ... Strobe 6 ... Viewfinder 7 ... Shooting lens 8 ... Release button 9 ... Recording button 10 ... Power switch 11 ... Switch button 12 ... Speaker 13 ... Touch tablet 23 ... CCD 27 ... Frame memory 29 ... CPU 31 ... Memory

Continuation of front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification number Office reference number FI Technical indication location H04N 1/387 H04N 1/41 B 1/41 1/413 D 1/413 G06F 15/62 325P 5/765 H04N 5/91 L

Claims (8)

[Claims] 1. A first input unit for inputting first image information, a second input unit for inputting second image information different from the first image information, and the first image information. Display means for synthesizing and displaying the second image information at the same time, first compression means for compressing the first image information by a first compression method, and second image information for the first image information. An image recording apparatus comprising: a second compression method for compressing by a method different from the above compression method; and a recording means for individually recording the compressed information. 2. A first input means for inputting first image information, a character input means for inputting character information and generating a code of the character information, and a second character shape based on the character information. Character output means for outputting as image information; display means for synthesizing and displaying the first image information and the second image information at the same time; and a first compression method for compressing the first image information. A first compression means, a second compression method for compressing the second image information by a method different from the first compression method, and a recording means for individually recording the compressed information. Image recording device featuring 3. An image pickup means for converting an optical image into electronic first image information, an indicating member, an input detecting means for generating second image information from a locus of the indicating member, and Image processing means for processing the first and second image information and recording means for individually recording each image information are provided, and the first image information and the second image information are different in the image processing means. An image recording device characterized by performing data compression processing in a compression format. 4. A first input unit for inputting first image information, a second input unit for inputting second image information different from the first image information, and the first image information. And a second display unit that combines the second image information with the second image information and displays the combined image at the same time; a compression unit that compresses the first image information;
An image recording apparatus comprising: a recording unit that individually records image information. 5. A first input means for inputting first image information, a character input means for inputting character information and generating a code of the character information, and a second character shape based on the character information. Character output means for outputting as image information; display means for synthesizing and displaying the first image information and the second image information at the same time; compression means for compressing the first image information; An image recording apparatus comprising: a first image information and a recording unit that individually records the uncompressed second image information. 6. An image pickup means for converting an optical image into electronic first image information, an indicating member, an input detecting means for generating second image information from a locus of the indicating member, and a first detecting means. And image processing means for processing the second image information, and recording means for individually recording each image information, wherein the image processing means performs data compression processing only on the first image information. Image recording device. 7. A first input means for inputting first image information, a character input means for inputting character information and generating a code of the character information, and a second character shape based on the character information. Character output means for outputting as image information; display means for synthesizing and displaying the first image information and the second image information at the same time; and a first compression method for compressing the first image information. A first compression means, a second compression means for compressing the code of the character information, and a recording means for individually recording the compressed first image information and the code of the compressed character information. An image recording device characterized by the above. 8. A first input unit for inputting first image information, a second input unit for inputting second image information different from the first image information, and the first image information. And a display unit capable of combining and displaying the second image information at the same time, and a recording unit for individually recording the first image information and the uncompressed second image information. Image recording device.