JPH0983691A - Picture processor and its method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To output a visible picture in a direction where the order of recording mediums on which the picture is outputted is uniform at the time of record- outputting the visible picture on a prescribed medium by the unit of the page of a book. SOLUTION: When an operation part 18 specifies a book copying mode, CCD 11 reads a book original mounted on an original reading face and a picture memory 16 stores it through a selector part 15. CPU 14 prepares the histogram of the vertical/horizontal black picture elements of picture data stored in the picture memory 16 to decide whether the book is written vertically or horizontally. In addition CPU 14 detects the direction of characters by character recognizing processing to judge whether the book is opened at its left or right side based on this result to read and record-output the pages in an order corresponding to the deciding result.

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 and method for digitally reading a document image and outputting a duplicate image.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a structure as shown in FIG. 10 is generally used as a structure for digitally reading an original image and outputting a duplicate image.

FIG. 10 is a sectional view of the reader unit 1 and the printer unit 2. The document feeding device 101 of the reader unit 1 feeds a document one by one sequentially from the last page onto the platen glass 102, and after the reading operation of the document is completed, the platen glass 102
The upper original is discharged. When the document is conveyed onto the platen glass 102, the lamp 103 is turned on, the movement of the scanner unit 104 is started, and the document is exposed and scanned. Light reflected from the original at this time is reflected by the mirror 1.
CC by 05, 106, 107 and lens 108
It is guided to a D image sensor (hereinafter referred to as CCD) 109. The image of the document thus scanned is read by the CCD 109. The image data output from the CCD 109 is transferred to the printer unit 2 after undergoing predetermined processing. The laser driver 221 of the printer unit 2 drives the laser emission unit 201, and causes the laser emission unit 201 to emit laser light according to the image data output from the reader unit 1. This laser light is applied to the photosensitive drum 202.
And a latent image corresponding to the laser beam is formed on the photosensitive drum 202. A developer is attached to the latent image portion of the photosensitive drum 202 by a developing device 203. And
At a timing synchronized with the start of the laser beam irradiation, a recording sheet is fed from one of the cassettes 204 and 205, is conveyed to the transfer unit 206, and transfers the developer attached to the photosensitive drum 202 to the recording sheet. The recording paper on which the developer is placed is conveyed to the fixing unit 207, and the developer is fixed on the recording paper by the heat and pressure of the fixing unit 207. The recording paper that has passed the fixing unit 207 is ejected by the ejection roller 208, and the sorter 220 stores the ejected recording paper in the respective pins to sort the recording paper. Note that the sorter 220 stores the recording paper in the uppermost bin when the sorting is not set. When double-sided recording is set, the recording sheet is conveyed to the discharge roller 208, the rotation direction of the discharge roller 208 is reversed, and the recording paper is guided to the re-feed conveyance path by the flapper 209. When multiple recording is set, the recording paper is guided to the re-feeding conveyance path by the flapper 209 so as not to be conveyed to the discharge roller 208. The recording sheet guided to the re-feeding conveyance path is transferred to the transfer unit 20 at the timing described above.
6 is fed.

[0004]

Consider a case in which, in the above-described structure, the original document is not fed by the original document feeder, but the original document bound like a book is copied while turning pages. At this time, there is known an image processing apparatus having a function of so-called continuous page copying, in which the spread pages of a book are continuously read and copied one by one. Which of the right and left pages of the spread is read and copied first? Is not always clear.

Generally, most of the magazines sold in Japan have right-opening pages, and the right page is the page before the left page. However, overseas, the left page is the page before the right page. Is normal. Therefore, in the continuous page copying, it is desirable that the former is sequentially read and copied in the order of right page → left page, and conversely, the latter is sequentially read and copied in order of left page → right page.

[0006]

Therefore, according to the present invention, when a visible image is recorded and output on a predetermined recording medium for each page of a book, the output order of the recording medium is output in a uniform direction. It is an object of the present invention to provide an image processing apparatus and method that enable the above.

In order to solve this problem, for example, the image processing apparatus of the present invention has the following configuration. That is,
An image processing apparatus that reads a book page by page, records a visible image on a predetermined recording medium, and outputs the visible image, and a detection unit that detects a direction in which characters are arranged based on image information of the book. And a control unit that determines the front-back relation of the images of the two opened pages of the book based on the arrangement direction of the characters and records the visible images corresponding to the two pages in the order based on the front-back relation.

Further, according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the detecting means displays a reading means for prescanning the image of the book and a histogram of horizontal and vertical pixels of the read original image. Creating means for creating, first judging means for judging vertical writing or horizontal writing based on the histogram created by the creating means, and second judging means for judging the orientation of characters in the read original image. It is desirable to detect the arrangement direction of the characters based on the judgment results of the first and second judging means.

As a result, the operator can make the order of the pages to be output uniform by merely performing the reading operation with the book open.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An example of an embodiment according to the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

[First Embodiment] An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an image processing apparatus embodying the present invention. The basic structure is the same as that of FIG. 10, and is composed of a reader unit 1 and a printer unit 2, and a CCD 11
The image signal read by is sent to the printer unit through well-known digital signal processing such as A / D converter 12 and shading correction circuit 13, and a plurality of images are obtained by laser exposure, development, transfer, fixing, etc. of the printer unit. Is output.

Here, in the present embodiment, when a copy mode of a plurality of pages of a book (hereinafter referred to as a book copy mode) is specified through the operation unit 18 and a copy start instruction is given,
Prior to outputting a plurality of original images, the original is pre-scanned to detect the binding direction of the original book.

C for controlling the sequence therefor
The PU 14 and the selector unit 15 that switches the output destination of the image signal in order to write the image signal in the image memory 16 once at the time of the document prescan. 17 is the CPU 14
Is a scanning controller unit that controls execution of scanning of a document according to an operation order determined by a method described later.

Reference numeral 18 denotes an operation unit as described above, which has the number of copies, a copy mode (designation of a book copy mode in the embodiment, a normal copy mode, etc.), and an instruction to start copying. Various buttons (or switches) are provided, and a simple display unit (liquid crystal display unit or the like) is provided. Further, 19 is a processing procedure of the CPU 14 (a program based on the flowchart shown in FIG. 8)
And a character recognition dictionary (the reason will be described later).

The operation in the book copy mode will be described below (the normal copy mode is not directly related to the present invention, so the description thereof is omitted).

First, the document binding direction detection processing by the CPU 14 will be described.

2A and 2B are views for explaining how to bind pages in a general book. FIG. 2A shows a typical example of a right-opening book and FIG. 2B shows a typical example of a left-opening book. In (A), the right page 22 is before the left page 21, while in (B), the left page 23 is the right page 24.
It is the previous page. (A) is a binding method peculiar to a vertical writing document in Japanese, and most other books are usually in the form of (B). Therefore, if it is determined whether the original document is (A), that is, whether it is a vertically written Japanese book, it can be determined whether the document is right-open or left-open.

Therefore, the CPU 14 performs the procedure shown in FIG. 7 to execute the book copy mode. It should be noted that this process operates when a book copy button (not shown) provided on the operation unit 18 is pressed, and it is assumed that the book document is placed on the reading surface (platen glass). .

First, in step S1, the CPU 11 pre-scans the original image with the CCD 11 and temporarily stores the read image signal in the image memory 16 by switching the selector. As shown in FIG. 3, the image memory 16 stores binary data of "1" in pixels corresponding to black portions of a document and "0" in pixels corresponding to white portions.
FIG. 3 shows an example of a vertically written document, and FIG. 4 shows an example of a vertically written document.

After that, when the read original image is m (horizontal dots) × n (vertical dots), the CPU 11 secures variables y (m) and t (n) in the memory 19, for example, the original image. The pixel at the position of the coordinates (1, 1) in the upper left corner of is read. After this, positions (1, 2), (1, 3) ... (1,
The process of reading m) and reading from the beginning of the next line to the right is repeated.

In this process, the read position is set to (i, j) (1
.Ltoreq.i.ltoreq.m, 1.ltoreq.n.ltoreq.n), if the bit at the pixel of interest is "1", variables t (j) and y
A process of incrementing the contents of (i) by "1" is performed.

Thus, when the above process is finally repeated up to the lower right pixel, the number of black pixels in the vertical direction is stored in the variable y (), and the black pixel in the horizontal direction is stored in t (). Become.

That is, reference numerals 31 to 3 shown in FIGS.
Information corresponding to the histogram shown by 4 can be obtained. This process is performed in step S2.

As shown in FIG. 3 and FIG. 4, the line spacing between the vertically written document and the horizontally written document is small in the character arrangement direction.
Since it becomes larger in the perpendicular direction, it can be seen that the vertical histogram 32 in FIG. 3 shows a valley representing the line spacing on the histogram, and conversely in FIG. 4 the horizontal histogram 33 shows a similar valley. Therefore, by detecting this valley from this histogram, it is possible to detect whether or not the document is written vertically.

Here, the principle of valley detection will be described with reference to FIG. The figure (A) shows the case where the valley does not exist, and the figure (B) shows the case where the valley exists. Lines 41A and 41B showing the maximum value of the histogram and lines 42A and 42B showing half the maximum value are shown.
When the intersection of the lines 42A and 42B and the histogram is obtained, it becomes like a black circle in the figure, and in the figure (A), two black circles 43
However, it can be seen that there are 8 black circles like 44 in FIG. That is, when a valley exists, it can be considered that there are twice as many intersections as the number of rows. Therefore, if the number of intersections is 6 or more, it is possible to determine that a valley between rows exists if the presence or absence of a valley is used as a criterion for determining whether there are three or more rows. By performing such processing, a valley is detected in the vertical histogram 32 in the case of FIG. 3, and a valley is detected in the vertical histogram 33 in FIG. Therefore, it is possible to determine that the document is vertically written in FIG. 3 and the document is horizontally written in FIG. This processing is performed in step S3 in FIG.

Next, the CPU 14 determines the orientation of the character (step S4). According to the above process,
For example, a manuscript as shown in FIG. 6 is also determined to be vertically written, and it is also for detecting the characteristic that lines continue in the same direction as the direction of characters as an arrangement peculiar to Japanese.

The CPU 14 cuts out an area for one character from the image data, calculates the degree of similarity by using a known character recognition method using the character pattern and the character recognition dictionary stored in the memory unit 19 in advance. The character image is recognized (FIG. 7). At this time, a character pattern dictionary (template) to be referred to has a normal orientation 62, and three patterns 63, 64, and 65 obtained by rotating it by 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees are generated from the reference dictionary pattern, The degree of similarity with the original character 61 for each is obtained. When the degree of similarity to the 0 degree (reference) or 180 degree pattern is the highest, the original document is written vertically and
If the degree of similarity to degrees 270 and 270 degrees is greater, it can be determined that the original document has horizontal writing characters as shown in FIG. The angle of 180 degrees corresponds to the case where the vertically written document is upside down. The above is summarized in the following table.

[0029]

[Table 1]

That is, if the condition of "vertical writing (FIG. 3)" in the above table is satisfied, it is determined that the Japanese document is a vertically writing original, that is, the right-opening of FIG. 2 (A).

When the above determination is completed, the CPU 14 proceeds to step S5 to display a message for confirming the opening direction of the placed book on the display section of the operation section 18, and at the same time, depressing the start key. Also displays a message instructing you to do so.

If the operator depresses the start key on the operation unit 18, the process proceeds to step S7,
Either the copying process of step S8 or step S9 is performed according to the previously determined opening direction.

For example, when it is determined that the book is a right-opening book, as shown in FIG. 9, the page number of the portion A of the document reading surface (platen glass) is one less than the page number of the portion B. Becomes (upside down FIG. 2 (A)). Therefore, in step S8, the scanning controller 17 is controlled to copy the portion A first, and then copy the portion B.

On the other hand, if it is determined that the book is a left-opening book, the page number of the portion B in FIG. 9 is one less than the page number of the portion A. Therefore, step S
In 9, the copy processing of the B portion is first performed, and then the copy processing of the A portion is performed.

In any case, in one copy process (step S8 or step S9), the copy process for two sheets is performed, and when this process is completed, the process returns to step S5 to copy the next page. A message prompting you to turn the page is displayed on the screen and waits for the start key to be pressed.

In this way, the copying process is sequentially carried out. If the pressing of the cancel key provided on the operation unit 18 is detected in the middle of this process, the process proceeds from step S6 to step S10, and the judgment here is made. Is "yes", the book copy mode is terminated.

According to the above description, as long as the operator correctly opens the pages of the book and sequentially performs the copy operation, the order of copying and outputting is the same regardless of whether the book is left-opened or right-opened.
The pages are output in order from the smallest page number. That is,
For example, pages 2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, ... And even and odd pages will not be output in the reverse order. However, there is no problem in the case of an apparatus capable of outputting so that the recording surface by copying becomes the bottom, but when the recording surface faces upward, the top copy paper tries to copy the book. It will be the last page of the range and will eventually need to be sorted. However, this rearrangement may be a monotonous rearrangement.

Further, for example, when copying a page range of a book, if the copying operation is performed in the direction going back from the last page of the copy range, the above problems can be solved. In this case, the copy process of the left-opened or right-opened book needs to be reversed from the above embodiment.

[Other Embodiments] In the above description, the operations of manuscript images and the output sequence are controlled. However, a plurality of pages of manuscript images are all stored in the image memory according to the opening direction of the book to be copied, and then the pages are stored. The print order may be changed to the print order, or the storage order may be fixed, and the output order of each page may be changed according to the determination result at the time of output.

In this case, since a large capacity is required as the image memory, the cost can be reduced by using a hard disk device or the like instead of the image memory.

Further, in the above embodiment, the opening direction of the book is automatically judged and the book is operated according to the judgment result. However, the operator operates that the book is opened to the right or left. The instruction may be given from the section 18. In this case, an operator's instruction corresponding to that is required as compared with the above-described embodiment, but, for example, not only the document pre-scanning operation but also the histogram creation processing and the character recognition processing are unnecessary.

The present invention may be applied to a system including a plurality of devices such as a host computer, an interface, and a printer, or may be applied to an apparatus including a single device such as a copying machine. Further, it goes without saying that the present invention can be applied to the case where it is implemented by supplying a program to a system or an apparatus. In this case, the storage medium storing the program according to the present invention constitutes the present invention. Then, by reading the program from the storage medium to the system or device, the system or device operates in a predetermined manner.

[0043]

As described above, according to the present invention, in continuous page copying of a book original, the page copying operation is set by automatically discriminating how to bind the pages of the original, and thus the page of the copied output is set. The order can be matched with the page order of the book, and it is not necessary to manually change the order of the output paper after copying as in the conventional case.

[0044]

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a book manuscript.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a relationship between a vertically written document and vertical and horizontal histograms of the document image.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a relationship between a horizontally written original and a vertical and horizontal histogram of the original image.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a principle of valley detection of a histogram in the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a state in which a horizontally written document is rotated 90 degrees.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the principle of character direction detection.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing copy processing in a book copy mode according to the embodiment.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing a state of a book placed on a document reading surface during copying.

FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating a configuration example of a general image processing apparatus.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Reader Unit 2 Printer Unit 11 CCD 12 A / D Converter 13 Shading Correction Unit 14 CPU 15 Selector 16 Image Memory 17 Scan Controller 18 Operation Unit 19 Memory

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. An image processing apparatus for reading a book page by page, recording a visible image on a predetermined recording medium, and outputting the visible image, wherein the detection is performed to detect a direction in which characters are arranged based on image information of the book. And a control means for determining the front-back relation of the images of the two opened pages of the book based on the detected arrangement direction of the characters, and recording the visible images corresponding to the two pages in the order based on the front-back relation. An image processing apparatus comprising: 2. The detecting means includes a reading means for prescanning the image of the book, a creating means for creating horizontal and vertical pixel histograms of the read original image, and the creating means. The first and second determining means, including first determining means for determining vertical writing or horizontal writing based on the histogram, and second determining means for determining the orientation of characters in the read original image. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the arrangement direction of the characters is detected based on the determination result of. 3. An image processing method for reading a book page by page, recording a visible image on a predetermined recording medium, and outputting the visible image, wherein detection is performed to detect a direction in which characters are arranged based on image information of the book. And a control step of determining the front-back relation of the images of the two opened pages of the book based on the detected arrangement direction of the characters and recording the visible images corresponding to the two pages in the order based on the front-rear relation. An image processing method comprising: 4. The detecting step includes a reading step of prescanning an image of the book, a creating step of creating a histogram of horizontal and vertical pixels of the read original image, and a creating step of the creating step. The first and second determination steps, which include a first determination step of determining vertical writing or horizontal writing based on the histogram, and a second determination step of determining the orientation of characters in the read original image. The image processing method according to claim 3, wherein the direction in which the characters are arranged is detected based on the determination result.