JPH11224259A - Processor and method for image processing and storage medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a processor, method, and storage medium which make it easy to manage an image having areas of different resolution (multi-resolution image). SOLUTION: The multi-resolution image is taken in by a scanner etc., and displayed by using a thumbnail format 301 and a list format 302. The necessary multi-resolution image 310 or images 320 of respective areas are displayed and printed by indicating the thumbnails or list. Consequently, an image having areas of different resolution can easily be managed and processed even for display and print without any trouble.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to processing (storing, displaying, and printing) of an image having a plurality of resolutions captured by a scanner or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, an image read by a scanner is
It was processed (stored, displayed, and printed) by a database or file system as one document and one document (one file).

[0003]

In a case where a single document contains a character image sufficient to be read at a low resolution and an image (such as a map) to be read at a high resolution,
If all of the sheets are scanned at a high resolution, the amount of data increases and the processing time increases. To reduce the amount of data, high-resolution images had to be separately scanned and retained.

[0004] The present invention has been made under such circumstances, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus, a method, and a storage medium which can easily process an image having regions having different resolutions (multi-resolution images). Is what you do.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, according to the present invention, an image processing apparatus is configured as follows (1) to (8), and an image processing method is configured as follows (9). Then, the storage medium is configured as in the following (10).

(1) A database means for linking a plurality of image data of different resolutions and storing them as one composite image data, a management storage means for storing specific information of each image data, the composite image data and the specific An output unit that generates and outputs output data based on the information.

(2) The image processing apparatus according to (1), wherein the specific information includes at least coordinates and resolution of each image data.

(3) The image processing apparatus according to (1), wherein the output means outputs and displays the area of each image data on a display means based on the composite image data and the specific information.

(4) The image processing apparatus according to (1), wherein the output means forms print data having areas having different resolutions based on the composite image data and the specific information, and outputs the print data to a printing unit. .

(5) The image processing apparatus according to the above (1), further comprising a fetching means for fetching image data of a plurality of different resolutions.

(6) The display device according to (3), further comprising display control means for controlling the composite image data to be displayed as a list on the display means in a thumbnail format and / or a list format.
The image processing apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims.

(7) There is further provided setting means for setting the resolution of each area of the document image, and the capturing means captures image data from the document image based on the resolution set by the setting means. The image processing apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims.

(8) The image processing apparatus according to (1), wherein the output means prints out the composite image data as a plurality of print data corresponding to a plurality of image data.

(9) An image processing method in an image processing apparatus, wherein a plurality of image data having different resolutions are linked and stored as one composite image data in a database means, and specific information of each image data is managed. An image processing method comprising: storing in a storage unit; and generating output data based on the composite image data and the specific information and outputting the output data to an output unit.

(10) A storage medium storing a program for realizing the image processing method according to (9).

[0016]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to examples of an image processing system. The present invention is not limited to the form of the system (apparatus), but may be a form of a method, and further a C storing a program for realizing the method.
The present invention can be similarly implemented in the form of a storage medium such as a D-ROM. “Apparatus” in the claims is intended to include the system.

[0017]

FIG. 2 shows an embodiment of an "image processing system".
FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing the configuration of FIG. This system is a PC
The PC 200 includes a (personal computer) 200, a scanner 210, and a print 215. The PC 200 includes a display device 201, an input device 202, and a central processing unit 203.
, An external storage device 204, a memory 205, and an external interface 206.
An external interface 211 and a central processing unit 212
, A memory 213, and a sensor driving unit 214. The printer 215 includes an external interface 216,
Operation panel 217, central processing unit 218, and printing unit 21
9, a ROM 220 and a RAM 221. The external interface 206 and 211 and 216 are connected by a cable.

FIG. 3 is an outline of a main window for displaying a list of images in a storage area of a database system or a file system according to the present embodiment. In the figure, 3
01 indicates the storage area α in a thumbnail format, and it is assumed that there are three objects (A, B, C). 302 is
The storage area α is shown in a list format. 30
Reference numeral 3 denotes a button for changing a storage area to be displayed. A button 304 is used to select a thumbnail format and a list format.

Reference numeral 310 denotes an image in which one reference area image in the storage area α is displayed in the size of a sheet actually scanned in another frame. When there is a specific area image in this standard area image, it is explicitly shown that the specific area image is enclosed by a frame.

Reference numeral 320 denotes an image in which a specific area image in the image 310 is displayed in another frame in consideration of the resolution.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the relationship between the standard area image and the specific area image displayed in FIG. The relative position and size of each image are shown with the upper left corner of the standard area image as the origin. This value is stored in the multi-resolution image management table.

FIG. 5 shows a multi-resolution image management table 5.
FIG. The storage area, the image name, the relative position to the standard area image, the resolution, and the image type are stored. Normally, this table is stored in the external storage device 204, read and updated in the memory when registering, displaying, printing, and deleting an image, and stored again in the external storage device 204.

Here, the outline of the registration processing in the scan & database in this embodiment will be described in comparison with general scan & registration processing. In a general scan & registration process, images scanned at one resolution are stored and managed one by one in a database. On the other hand, in the scan & registration process according to the present embodiment, images scanned at a plurality of resolutions on one sheet are linked and managed. Therefore, an image scanned by changing the resolution in one sheet of paper can be managed from a standard scanned image in a form required by the user.

The program is stored in an external storage device (FD, CD-ROM,
ROM, magnetic tape, etc.) and a storage medium on the printer side, and the program may be stored in a storage device (memory) by a reading device (not shown) in each central processing unit. .

It goes without saying that the present invention is also applicable to a case where the present invention is implemented by supplying a program to a system. 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 into the system, the system operates in a predetermined manner.

In this embodiment, an image scanned by the conventional scanning method is set as a standard area image. The entire document surface may be scanned, or the scanning range may be selected even in the standard area. An image scanned at a resolution different from that of the standard area is called a specific area image. One image includes one standard area image and zero or more specific area images.

The scan & registration process performed by the central processing unit 203 of the present system will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

In step 101, a preview image of a document located on a platen for scanning is prescanned and displayed. In step 102, a specific area to be scanned at a specific resolution is selected on the preview screen. Step 1
At 03, a standard resolution and a specific resolution are input. At step 104, the standard area is scanned at the standard resolution. In step 105, it is determined whether or not to scan the specific area. If the specific area is not scanned, the process from step 108 is continued. If the specific area is to be scanned in step 105, the specific area is scanned at a specific resolution in step 106. In step 107, step 10
It is determined whether or not all the specific areas selected in step 2 have been scanned.
Continues processing from. If it is determined in step 107 that all the specific areas have been scanned, in step 108 all the scanned images are stored in the database. The storage method in the database is known. In step 109, the multi-resolution image management table is read,
In step 110, the data is stored in the multi-resolution image management table, and in step 111, the multi-resolution image management table is stored, and the process ends.

The storage area display processing performed by the central processing unit 203 of the present system will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

At step 601, the storage area currently displayed is obtained. In step 602, the multi-resolution image management table is read, and in step 603, the standard area image is read from the database. At step 604,
It is determined from the multi-resolution image management table whether there is a specific area image, and if not, the processing is continued from step 607. If it is determined in step 604 that there is a specific area image, in step 605, the specific area image is read.
In step 606, it is determined whether all the specific area images have been read for one standard area image. If not, the processing is continued from step 605. If it is determined in step 606 that all the specific area images have been read, it is determined in step 607 whether all standard area images have been read. If not, the processing is continued from step 603. In the judgment of step 607,
If all standard area images have been read, step 6
At 08, it is determined whether the display format is the thumbnail format or the list format. If it is determined in step 608 that the image is in the thumbnail format, in step 609, a thumbnail image is created from the standard area image and the specific area image. In step 610, the image is displayed in the storage area in accordance with the display format, and the process ends.

Referring to the flowchart of FIG. 7, the entire image display processing performed by the central processing unit 203 of the present system will be described.
This processing is performed in the storage area 30 in the main window 300.
This is activated when one image which is 1 or 302 is selected and a display command is selected.

In step 701, the storage area currently displayed is obtained. In step 702, the multi-resolution image management table is read, and in step 703, the standard area image is read from the database. At step 704,
It is determined from the multi-resolution image management table whether there is a specific area image, and if not, the processing is continued from step 708. If it is determined in step 704 that there is a specific area image, in step 705, the specific area image is read.
In step 706, it is determined whether all the specific area images have been read for one standard area image. If not, the processing is continued from step 705. If it is determined in step 706 that all the specific area images have been read, in step 707, the data of the specific image area is embedded in the standard image. In step 708, the image that has been read and processed (it may be unprocessed) is displayed in another frame (see 310 in FIG. 3), and the process ends.

The specific area image display processing performed by the central processing unit 203 of the present system will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. This process is started when a specific area in the main window 310 is selected and a display command is selected.

At step 801, the storage area currently displayed is obtained. In step 802, the multi-resolution image management table is read. In step 803, the specific area image is read from the database.
The image is displayed in another frame (see 320 in FIG. 3).
The process ends.

The printing process performed by the central processing unit 203 of the present system will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG. In this process, one image which is the storage area 301 or 302 in the main window 300 is selected by the input device 202 such as a mouse, and when a print command is selected, a print processing program (printer driver) is started. The print processing program is stored in the external storage device 204 of the PC 200 in advance, expanded in the memory 205, and controlled by the central processing unit 203.

In step 901, the print processing program acquires the currently displayed storage area, reads the multi-resolution image management table in step 902,
At 03, the standard area image is read from the database. In step 904, an image corresponding to the acquired display image is searched from the multi-resolution image management table, and it is determined whether the image has a specific area. If there is no specific area, the printing process is continued from step 907. Step 90
If it is determined in step 4 that there is a specific area image, step 90
At 5, the specific area image is read from the database.
In step 906, it is determined whether all the specific area images have been read for one standard area image. If not, the reading process is continued from step 905.
If it is determined in step 906 that all the specific area images have been read, the process proceeds to step 907.

In step 907, the print processing program (printer driver) determines whether the print instruction input by the user prints the standard area image and the specific area image separately.
Judgment is performed to determine whether to print together, and to send a standard area image, a specific area image, and a print format to the printer 215. In the case of printing together, in step 908, an image for printing is created from the standard area image and the specific area image in the printer 215, and printing is performed in step 909, and the process ends. In the print image created in step 908, the standard area is drawn in the memory (page buffer of the RAM 221) at the standard resolution, and the specific area is drawn in the memory at the specific resolution. If printing is to be performed separately in step 907, the standard area image and the specific area image are printed in step 910, and the process ends.

Here, the processing of step 908 will be described with reference to the block diagram of the printer 215 in FIG. The printer 215 converts the received data (the standard area image and the specific area image) into a high resolution image (based on the specific area image) in a specific area on the page buffer of the RAM 221 in dots and develops a low resolution image (standard (Based on the area image) is expanded into dots. The dot images on the page buffer developed in this way are alternately drawn in the two band buffers and output to the printing unit 219 alternately.
Then, when drawing to the band buffer, the printing unit 21
In order to match with the resolution of 9, the image of the specific area of the page buffer is drawn as it is, and the image of the standard area is drawn with simple enlargement (increase in the number of dots).

In the above description, the resolution of the printing unit 219 is matched when outputting from the page buffer to the band buffer. However, in step 908, when the image of each area is drawn in the page buffer,
19 resolutions may be matched. In this case, the standard area image is dot-expanded in the page buffer while being simply enlarged, and the specific area image is directly dot-expanded if the resolution is the same as the printing unit resolution. Of course, if the resolution of the specific area image is different from the resolution of the printing unit, it goes without saying that simple enlargement or simple thinning is performed. In step 908, the process of matching the resolution accompanying the development drawing is also performed.

The above processing is not limited to the printer side.
The processing after step 907 may be performed by the print processing program (printer driver) of the personal computer. In this case, the print processing program uses the memory 20 of the PC 200
5, the image of each area is dot-developed according to the resolution of the printer, and the created printing image is
15 is output.

As described above, according to the present embodiment,
Storage, display, and printing of multi-resolution images can be easily performed without requiring special techniques.

In this embodiment, the area to be scanned at another resolution is selected by the user on the preview screen. However, the character area and the picture area are automatically discriminated using the currently known OCR technique, and the picture area is separated. It can be implemented by automatically scanning at the resolution. Even when the picture area is automatically determined, it is necessary to check which area is appropriate. In the present embodiment, images of a plurality of resolutions are managed for images read from a scanner. However, if an image can be input at a plurality of resolutions in an image input device other than a scanner or in an image input process, the same operation is performed. be able to.

In this embodiment, in the flowchart 6 showing the storage area display processing and the flowchart 7 showing the image front display processing, the thumbnail image and the entire image are synthesized from the standard image and the specific image. If the method of combining the specific image and the standard image is used only in the flow chart 8 showing the specific image display processing and the flow chart 9 showing the print processing, this is displayed using the standard image as it is. In the latter case, the same effect as in the present embodiment can be obtained.

[0044]

As described above, according to the present invention,
It is easier to manage images with areas with different resolutions,
Display and printing can be processed without troublesome work.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing registration processing of a multi-resolution image in an embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a main window of a multi-resolution image.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a relative positional relationship between a standard area image and a specific area image.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a multi-resolution image management table.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing storage area display processing.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing an entire image display process.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing a specific area image display process.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing a printing process.

[Explanation of symbols]

200 PC 201 display device 202 input device 203 central processing unit 204 external storage device 205 memory 210 scanner 301 main window (thumbnail display in storage area α) 302 main window (list display in storage area α) 310 image display window 1 ( (Display standard area image) 320 Image display window 2 (Display specific area image)

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. A database means for linking a plurality of image data of different resolutions and storing them as one composite image data, a management storage means for storing specific information of each image data, the composite image data and the specific information Output means for generating and outputting output data based on the image data. 2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the specific information includes at least coordinates and resolution of each image data. 3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the output unit explicitly displays an area of each of the image data on a display unit based on the composite image data and the specific information. apparatus. 4. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the output unit forms print data having areas having different resolutions based on the composite image data and the specific information, and outputs the print data to a printing unit. Image processing device. 5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a capturing unit that captures image data of a plurality of different resolutions. 6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising display control means for controlling the composite image data to be displayed as a list on the display means in a thumbnail format and / or a list format. 7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising setting means for setting a resolution of each area of the document image, wherein said capturing means captures image data from the document image based on the resolution set by said setting means. The image processing device according to claim 5. 8. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the output unit prints out the composite image data as a plurality of print data corresponding to a plurality of image data. 9. An image processing method in an image processing apparatus, comprising: a step of linking a plurality of image data having different resolutions and storing them in a database as one composite image data; and managing and storing specific information of each image data. An image processing method comprising: storing the composite image data in the means; generating output data based on the composite image data and the specific information; and outputting the generated output data to an output means. 10. A storage medium storing a program for realizing the image processing method according to claim 9.