JPH09259262A - Image processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To make it possible to read only necessary image data out to an image memory at a high speed by dividing image information into rectangular areas and storing them in an image storage device. SOLUTION: A storage block part of the image storage device 4 is an area for actually storing data of a file, and many storage block areas as minimum storage units are present and given unique addresses individually. When the image data are divided into blocks so that the capacity of each rectangular area matches a minimum storage unit and stored as a file in the image storage device 4, rectangular area data of capacity equal to the minimum storage unit are cut out of the image data in the image memory 5, arranged in order, and given a file name and stored in the image storage device 4. Then a rectangular area address including an area to be edited is calculated, the table of the corresponding file at the directory part of the image storage device 4 is referred to so as to retrieve which address the target data is stooped in, and the data are read out to the image memory.

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 in an image forming apparatus such as a printer, and more particularly to an image processing apparatus capable of editing / composing images at high speed with a small capacity memory.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, when a new image is generated by editing / combining a plurality of image data and electronically created form data, etc., an image read from an image input unit or previously stored in an image storage device. The stored image is read out onto the image memory, and image processing such as editing / compositing is performed on the image memory by a processor or the like. Since the portion of the image data necessary for editing / compositing cannot be easily specified or separated and extracted, it is necessary to read all the image data in the image storage device into the image memory for processing.
There is a problem that a large capacity image memory is required. To solve this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-1216
Japanese Patent Publication No. 90 discloses a technique in which image data is divided into blocks, each of which is stored individually, and only necessary data is read out to a memory.

[0003]

In the image data storage system in the conventional image processing apparatus as described above,
The relationship between the block size of image data and the storage unit of the image storage device is not taken into consideration, and there is a wasteful storage area that is not used when storing the image block in the storage unit, or the data of the required image block is not used. Since it is not immediately known to which address of the image storage device the image is stored, there is a problem that high-speed access cannot be performed.

An object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art and to provide an image processing apparatus capable of executing large-capacity image processing at high speed with a small-capacity image memory.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention relates to an image storage device for storing image information, an image processing memory for storing image information to be processed, and an image processing memory. In an image processing apparatus including an image processing unit that performs image processing on existing image information, the image information is divided into a plurality of rectangular areas having a data amount equal to a storage unit of the image storage apparatus, and Image storage means for storing image information of each rectangular area in a storage unit of the image storage device, and reading means for reading only the rectangular area necessary for image processing into the image processing memory are provided. . Another feature is that it is provided with a correspondence table of the identification numbers of the plurality of rectangular areas and the addresses of the storage units of the image storage device storing the rectangular areas.

According to the present invention, since the image information is divided into rectangular areas and stored in the image storage device according to the above-described configuration, the address of the image storage device storing the required image information can be easily obtained. The required image data can be read into the image memory at high speed. Therefore, a large amount of image processing can be executed at high speed with a small amount of image memory. Further, when storing the image data, there is no space when the blocks of the image data are allocated to the storage unit, so that the image storage device can be efficiently used.

[0007]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an image processing apparatus to which the present invention is applied. The image input unit 1 is a device for inputting image data from the outside,
For example, it is composed of an image scanner and its interface circuit, or a communication port, a LAN interface circuit, a floppy disk device and the like. The processor unit 2 includes a CPU, ROM, RAM, etc.
Based on the program stored in M or RAM,
Controls the entire device.

The image output section 3 is, for example, a printer device and its interface circuit. Image storage device 4
Is an external storage device capable of storing a large amount of image data, such as a hard disk device. The image memory 5 is a RAM used as a work area for storing image data subjected to image processing. The image memory 5 is composed of a RAM and is directly accessible from the CPU of the processor unit 2, or is accessed by a dedicated image processing processor based on an instruction from the CPU. The display unit 6 includes a display device such as a CRT display or a liquid crystal display device and its interface circuit. The display device displays, for example, the operating state of the device.
The display unit 6 may be omitted when the present invention is implemented. The bus 7 connects each circuit in the image processing apparatus.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of image processing in the image processing apparatus of the present invention. The image 1 is an image read into the image memory 5 from the scanner which is the image input unit 1, for example, and characters are drawn on the image as shown in the figure. Images 2 and 3 are images stored in the image storage device 4 and read out to the image memory 5. Images 2 and 3 have letters and figures (3
An image 1 ′ is edited / composed by copying a part of the images 2 and 3 indicated by dotted lines in the blank area of the image 1 while changing the position. Then, the combined image 1'is printed out.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory view showing a rectangular area obtained by dividing an image. For example, when the image 3 of FIG. 2 is stored in the image storage device 4, the image data is divided vertically and horizontally at the position of the dotted line as shown in FIG.
A rectangular area address is given to each rectangular data block as shown in the figure. The address allocation method is arbitrary as long as the original image can be reproduced. The size (data capacity) of this rectangular area is made to match the size of the storage unit of the image storage device 4 described later. Then, for example, if the coordinate data of the edit target area indicated by the broken line in FIG. 3 is known, the address of the rectangular area including the edit target can be easily calculated from the coordinate data and the vertical and horizontal size information of the rectangular area. Is.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing the configuration of the image storage device 4. The image storage device 8 is composed of, for example, a magnetic disk device, and its storage area is large and the directory unit 12
And the storage block unit 15. The directory unit 12 holds, for each stored file, a table of addresses 14 of the storage block unit in which file data is stored. For example, for file A, table 13, n, n + 1, n + 3, m +
6 ... is registered, which means that the address of the first data block of file A is n,
This indicates that the address of the next data block is n + 1. The directory unit 12 also has a table (not shown) in which whether or not the address of the storage block unit 15 is free is registered.

The storage block unit 15 is an area for actually storing the data of the file, and has a large number of storage block areas which are the minimum storage unit (for example, several kilobytes) of a fixed length defined by the normal format. A unique address is assigned to each area. When the image data as shown in FIG. 3 is divided into blocks so that the capacity of each rectangular area matches the minimum storage unit and is stored in the image storage device 4 as the file A, first the image data is stored in the image memory 5. Then, rectangular area data having a capacity equal to the minimum storage unit is cut out, arranged in order, attached with a file name (A), and stored in the image storage device 4.

By referring to the directory portion 13 of the image storage device 4, it is understood that the image data of the rectangular area address 1 is stored in the storage block address n of the file A. Similarly, it can be seen that the image data of the file A is stored in the storage block with hatching in the storage block portion of FIG. To store the file itself, the operating system normally searches and allocates a free storage block as needed, writes image data in the block, and registers an address in the table 13 of the directory section.

The image data of the area to be edited is stored in the image memory 5
In the case of reading to, the rectangular area address including the area is first calculated, and then the table of the corresponding file in the directory section of the image storage device 4 is referenced to determine which address of the storage block section is the target data. Search whether it is stored in. When the storage address is found, the data at that address is read out to the image memory 5. The actual reading from the disk device is usually executed by the operating system based on a request from the application program.

FIG. 6 shows the image memory 5 or another RAM.
It is explanatory drawing which shows the example of the correspondence table of the rectangular area address and memory block address memorize | stored in. The contents of this table are substantially the same as the table of the directory section of the image storage device 4. If such a table is stored in the memory, when accessing image data,
Since it is not necessary to read the contents of the directory unit 13 each time and extract the table of the corresponding file, and the target storage block can be read directly, high-speed access is possible. The contents of the correspondence table are
As will be described later, it is generated by executing the writing process by itself, or by storing the image data in the image storage device 4 and then reading the corresponding table from the directory unit 12.

FIG. 7 is a flow chart showing a writing process of image data. In step S1, FIG.
As shown in, the target image is divided into rectangular areas having the same capacity as the minimum storage unit of the image storage device 4, and addresses are assigned to the respective rectangular areas. In step S2, the value n of the counter indicating the rectangular area address to be processed is set to 1. In step S3, a free storage block in the image storage device 4 is searched by referring to the storage block free / closed table (not shown).

In step S4, the contents of the rectangular area of address n are written in the found free storage block, and the storage block address is also added to the table of the directory section. In step S5, the address of the storage block in which the data was written in step S4 is written in the storage block address column of the image storage device corresponding to the address n column of the rectangular area of the address correspondence table 11 shown in FIG. In step S6, 1 is added to the counter n, and in step S7 it is determined whether or not all the image data has been written. If the result is negative, the process returns to step S3 and repeats the processing.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the image data read processing. In step S10, the address of the rectangular area forming the area required by the image to be processed is obtained. This can be calculated if the length (number of pixels) of each side of the rectangle and the coordinate data of the area to be read are known. In step S11, the address correspondence table 11 is used to find each storage block address of the image storage device 4 corresponding to each rectangular address. In step S12, the contents of the storage block corresponding to the address obtained in step S11 are read from the image storage device 4.

Although the embodiment has been described above, the following modifications are also possible. The shape of the rectangle does not have to be a square, but may be a rectangle. As a method of matching the size of the rectangular area with the storage unit of the image storage device, in addition to the method of matching the size of the rectangular area with the storage unit, the size of the storage unit matches the size of the rectangular area. The format (partial) of the image storage device may be changed. Also,
Although the example in which the size of the rectangular area and the size of the storage unit is 1: 1 has been disclosed, the present invention has a ratio of the size of the rectangular area to the size of the storage unit of N: 1 or 1: N (N is It is practicable if it is 1 or more). Further, when the size of the rectangular area is smaller than the storage unit, dummy data may be added to the rectangular area data so as to match the storage unit.

[0020]

As described above, in the present invention,
In the image processing apparatus, the image information is divided into a plurality of rectangular areas having the same data amount as the storage unit of the image storage apparatus, and the image information of each of the divided rectangular areas is stored in the storage unit of the image storage apparatus. Then, only the rectangular area required for image processing is read into the image processing memory. Therefore, since the image information is divided into rectangular areas and stored in the image storage device,
The address of the image storage device in which the required image information is stored can be easily obtained, and only the required image data can be read into the image memory at high speed. Therefore, there is an effect that a large amount of image processing can be executed at high speed with a small amount of image memory. Further, at the time of storing the image data, there is no vacancy when the block of the image data is allocated to the storage unit, so that the image storage device can be efficiently used.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an image processing apparatus to which the present invention has been applied.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of image processing in the image processing apparatus of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing rectangular areas obtained by dividing an image.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a read process of image data.

5 is an explanatory diagram showing a configuration of an image storage device 4. FIG.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a correspondence table of rectangular area addresses and storage block addresses.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing a writing process of image data.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... Image input section, 2 ... Processor section, 3 ... Image output section,
4 ... Image storage device, 5 ... Image memory, 6 ... Display unit, 7 ...
Bus, 12 ... Directory part, 13 ... File A allocation table, 14 ... Storage block address, 15 ... Storage block part, 16 ... Storage block

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification code Internal reference number FI Technical indication H04N 1/21 G06F 15/66 A

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An image including an image storage device for storing image information, an image processing memory for storing image information to be processed, and an image processing unit for performing image processing on the image information stored in the image processing memory. In the processing device, the image information is divided into a plurality of rectangular areas having the same data amount as the storage unit of the image storage device, and the image information of each divided rectangular area is stored in the storage unit of the image storage device. An image processing apparatus, comprising: an image storage unit for performing image processing; and a reading unit for reading only the rectangular area necessary for image processing into the image processing memory. 2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a correspondence table of identification numbers of the plurality of rectangular areas and addresses of storage units of the image storage device storing the rectangular areas. .