WO2015027882A1

WO2015027882A1 - Method, apparatus and terminal for image processing

Info

Publication number: WO2015027882A1
Application number: PCT/CN2014/085095
Authority: WO
Inventors: Fang HOU; Feiyue HUANG; Yongjian Wu
Original assignee: Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Company Limited
Priority date: 2013-08-28
Filing date: 2014-08-25
Publication date: 2015-03-05
Also published as: CN104427341A; CN104427341B

Abstract

The embodiments of the present invention disclose an image processing method, apparatus and terminal. The method includes obtaining a to-be-compressed image and determining a compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, and finding a compression ratio which forms a mapping relationship with the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image in a preset compression relationship database. The compression relationship database stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio. The method further includes determining the found compression ratio as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, and prompting a user with image compression information according to the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image. Prompting the image compression information further includes prompting the estimated compression ratio or prompting an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

Description

METHOD, APPARATUS AND TERMINAL FOR IMAGE PROCESSING

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This application claims priority of Chinese Patent Application No.

201310382209.4, filed on August 28, 2013, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0002] The present invention generally relates to the field of image processing technology and, more particularly, to an image processing method, apparatus and terminal. BACKGROUND

[0003] For the convenience of storage, network transmission and management of image files, it often involves compressing and packaging large number of image files. Existing compression methods in general include searching for repeated bytes in corresponding binary information of a file, tagging or marking the repeated bytes with special characters, thus achieving the purpose of reducing the file size.

[0004] There are two kinds of compression: lossy compression or lossless compression. In lossy compression, if the loss of individual data in a file does not cause too much impact, those data could be discarded during data compression. The lossy compression methods are widely used in animation, sound and image files. The typical examples of the lossy compression are such as video file format MPEG, music file format MP3 and image file format JPG. [0005] While compressing image files in exiting compression methods in order to store or transfer the files, a user usually desires that the size of the compressed image file could reach or be smaller than a certain value. For example, when the user saves video, image or other files in a U-disk, the user desires that the size of the compressed image files could be smaller than the available storage space on the U-disk.

[0006] Currently, the user can only know the size of a compressed image file after waiting for a long compression processing time of an image file. And only then the user can determine whether a memory such as U-disk can store the compressed image file. If the memory cannot completely store the compressed image file, the compressed image file has to be deleted from the memory and the image file has to be compressed again, wasting the user time and lowering processing efficiency.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE DISCLOSURE

[0007] The embodiments of the present invention provides an image processing method, apparatus and terminal to quickly assess a compression ratio and to prompt a user with related compression information, improving the user's processing efficiency for file compressing.

[0008] One aspect of the present invention provides an image processing method, the method includes obtaining a to-be-compressed image and determining an compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, finding a compression ratio which forms a mapping relationship with the compression parameter in a preset compression relationship database, wherein the compression relationship database stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio. The disclosed image processing method further includes determining the found compression ratio as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be- compressed image, prompting a user with image compression information according to the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, wherein prompting the image compression information includes prompting the estimated compression ratio or prompting an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

[0009] Another aspect of the present invention provides an image processing apparatus, the apparatus includes an obtaining module, a finding module and an image processing module. The obtaining module is configured to obtain a to-be-compressed image and to determine a compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image. The finding module is configured to find a compression ratio which forms a mapping relationship with the compression parameter in a preset compression relationship database, wherein the compression relationship database stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio. The image processing module is configured to determine the found compression ratio as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, and to prompt a user with image compression information according to the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image.

Further, to prompt the user with the image compression information, the image processing module is further configured to prompt the user with the estimated compression ratio or an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

[0010] Further, the present invention provides a terminal device, and the terminal device includes the above image processing apparatus.

[0011] According to the disclosed embodiments of the present invention, before compressing the to-be-compressed image, the compression parameters of the to-be-compressed image is obtained, and an compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image according to the preset mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio can be estimated. The estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image or an image library and prompt users with related information can be quickly assessed. Thus, the repeated compressing problems occurred in current technologies, which can only determine the compression ratio and the amount of compression data after compressing, can be avoided, saving user time and improving efficiency.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0012] Figure 1 illustrates a flow chart of an image processing method according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention;

[0013] Figure 2 illustrates a flow chart of another image processing method according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention;

[0014] Figure 3 illustrates a flow chart of presetting a compression relationship database according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention;

[0015] Figure 4 illustrates a schematic block diagram of an image processing apparatus according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention;

[0016] Figure 5 illustrates a schematic block diagram of another image processing apparatus according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention;

[0017] Figure 6 illustrates a schematic block diagram of an image library processing module as shown in Figure 5 ;

[0018] Figure 7 illustrates a schematic block diagram of a mapping processing module as shown in Figure 5 ; and [0019] Figure 8 illustrates a block diagram of an exemplary image processing terminal device according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0020] The followings, together with accompanying drawings of disclosed embodiments of the present invention, describe in detail the technical solutions provided by disclosed embodiments of the present invention. Obviously, the description covers all the embodiments of the present invention. Based on the disclosed embodiments of the present invention, those ordinary skilled in the art may easily obtain similar embodiments without creative effort, those similar embodiments are also within the protection scope of the present invention. [0021] The disclosed embodiments of the present invention provide an image processing method for terminal devices. The terminal devices may include mobile terminals with data processing capability, such as smart phones, and tablet computers, etc. Figure 8 shows a block diagram of an exemplary terminal device 800.

[0022] As shown in Figure 8, terminal device 800 may include a processor 802, a storage medium 804, a monitor 806, a communication module 808, a database 810, and peripherals 812. Certain devices may be omitted and other devices may be included.

[0023] Processor 802 may include any appropriate processor or processors. Further, processor 802 can include multiple cores for multi-thread or parallel processing. Storage medium 504 may include memory modules, such as ROM, RAM, flash memory modules, and erasable and rewritable memory, and mass storages, such as CD-ROM, U-disk, and hard disk, etc. Storage medium 804 may store computer programs for implementing various processes, when executed by processor 802. [0024] Further, peripherals 812 may include I/O devices such as keyboard and mouse, and communication module 808 may include network devices for establishing connections through the communication network. Database 810 may include one or more databases for storing certain data and for performing certain operations on the stored data, such as database searching.

[0025] In operation, terminal device 800 may process a to-be-compressed image as requested by a user of the terminal device 800. Figure 1 provides a flow chart of an image processing method according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention. The disclosed method may be applied in smart phones, tablet computers, personal computers, wearable intelligent devices and other intelligent terminals to prompt a compression of an obtained image file, such as photo, picture, video, etc. Specifically, the method includes the following steps.

[0026] As shown in Figure 1, at the beginning, in S 101, a to-be-compressed image is obtained, compression parameters of the to-be-compressed image is determined. The to-be- compressed image may be a photo or a video captured by a terminal. The to-be-compressed image may also be an image or a video downloaded from network. The compression parameters include various parameters such as image compression ratio or the amount of compression data. Specifically, the compression parameters may include the amount of the to-be-compressed image data and/or image quality of the to-be-compressed image, etc.

[0027] The amount of the to-be-compressed image data (i.e., the number of bytes) may be obtained directly from property information of a corresponding image file. The image file may contain the photo, video or image captured by the terminal. The image quality of the to-be- compressed image may be calculated based on the noise, texture and color difference in the image and video. Of course, the image quality may also be obtained by comparing a quantization table (which is a string of numbers or simply 'Α') read from an image file (e.g., JPG file) header with a preset quantization reference table. The quantization reference table may be a mapping table between all quantitative information and image quality, and the image quality is the quality value corresponding to A found in the quantization reference table. For JPG files, the quantization reference table may adopt the standard published by JPEG official website. For example, for an obtained image, the amount of the to-be-compressed image data is 500Kb, and the image quality is 75.

[0028] In S102, a compression ratio, which forms a mapping relationship with the compression parameters, is found in a preset compression relationship database. The compression relationship database stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameters and the compression ratio.

[0029] The compression relationship database may include a mapping table, which records a one-to-one mapping between the compression parameter and the compression ratio in the compression relationship database. After the compression parameter such as the amount of data and the image quality of the to-be-compressed image is determined, the mapping table is directly searched to obtain the corresponding compression ratio based on the mapping relationship.

[0030] The compression ratio corresponding to the compression parameter is obtained by compressing a large amount of training images. In general, the compression ratio of an image is closely related to the amount of data and the image quality of the image. So images with the image quality in the same quality range and the amount of data in the same amount range may be collected to form a training image set. And the images in the training image set can be compressed to obtain the compression ratios of the images in the image quality range and the image data amount range. By compressing images in multiple different training sets, a mapping relationship between compression parameter, which includes the image quality and the amount of image data, and compression ratio can be obtained. And the obtained mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio can then be stored in a preset compression relationship database.

[0031] Further, in S 103, the compression ratio found from the preset compression relationship database is determined as an estimated compassion ratio of the to-be-compressed image and, based on the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, a user is prompted with image compression information. The prompting image compression information includes prompting the estimated compression ratio or prompting an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

[0032] If the to-be-compressed image is the only image to be compressed, then in S103, the user is prompted with a specific estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image. Further, based on the estimated compression ratio and the amount of the to-be-compressed image data, the estimated amount of compression data is obtained by multiplying the two and the estimated amount of compression data is prompted to the user as the image compression information.

[0033] If the to-be-compressed image is an image library or a collection of images including the to-be-compressed image, other images in the image library are treated in turn as a to-be-compressed image and processed from steps S101 to S103. The estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image in the image library is thus obtained. And an average compression ratio is calculated and prompted to the user as compression information of the image library. Further, based on the amount of data and the estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image in the image library, the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image is obtained by multiplying the two. And by adding up the amount of compression data of every to-be-compressed images, an estimated amount of compression data of the image library is obtained. The obtained estimated amount of compression data of the image library is prompted to the user as the image compression information of the image library.

[0034] Specifically, in S103, a text box may be used to prompt the user with the image compression information such as the compression ratio or the amount of compressed data.

[0035] Thus, according to the disclosed embodiments, before compressing the to-be- compressed image, the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image is obtained, and based on the preset mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio, the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image can be obtained. Thus, the compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image or the image library may be quickly estimated and the user can be prompted with related image compression information, therefore the repeated compression problems occurred in current technologies can be avoided, saving the user's time and improving compression efficiency.

[0036] Figure 2 illustrates a flow cart of another image processing method according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention. The method includes the following steps.

[0037] S201, a to-be-compressed image is obtained and a compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image is determined.

[0038] S202, a compression ratio, which forms a mapping relationship with the compression parameter, is found in a preset compression relationship database. The compression relationship database stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio.

[0039] S203, the found compression ratio is determined as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, and a user is prompted with image compassion information based on the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image. For a to-be- compressed image in an image library, following steps S201 to S203, the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image can be obtained, similar to the descriptions corresponding to Figure 1.

[0040] S204, the estimated compression ratio of the other to-be-compressed images in the image library where the to-be-compressed image is located is also determined. The rest to- be-compressed images in the image library are processed through steps S201 to S203 to obtain the estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image in the image library.

[0041] S205, based on the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be- compressed image, the user is prompted with image compression information of the image library where the to-be-compressed image is located. The image compression information may be an average estimated compression ratio of all to-be-compressed images in the image library. The image compression information may also be a total amount of compression data calculated by adding up the estimated amount of compression data of the entire to-be-compressed images, wherein the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image is obtained by multiplying the estimated compression ratio and the amount of each to-be-compressed image data. [0042] Specifically, a text box may be popped up to display the user with the image compression information, such as the average compression ratio or the total amount of compression data of the image library.

[0043] In addition, the estimated total amount of compression data obtained in Step S205 may also be used as the image compression information. Thus, Step S205 may further include, based on the amount of each to-be-compressed image data and the determined estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image in the image library, the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library is obtained by multiplying the estimated compression ratio and the amount of data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library, the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library is then added up to obtain the estimated total amount of compression data. Still in Step S205, the obtained estimated total amount of compression data of the image library is prompted to the user as the image compression information.

[0044] According to the prompted image compression information, if the user believes that the total amount of compression data prompted in the image compression information does not satisfy the requirements for local storage or network transmission, the user may interrupt the compression operation. Optionally, the disclosed embodiments may further execute following steps S206 to S207.

[0045] S206, after prompting the user the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library, it is detected whether a user event, such as a user clicking event, to select a compressing process is generated. After prompting the user the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library, the current user's touch-screen operation or mouse clicks are detected. If the user selects to compress the image library, the process proceeds to execute S207. Otherwise, after prompted with the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library, the user may find that the amount of compression data does not satisfy the requirements for local storage or network transmission and selects not to continue, therefore the compressing process is not performed.

[0046] S207, if the user event to select the compressing process is generated, the image library is compressed. Using existing compressing technologies to directly compress the corresponding to-be-compressed images, the entire image library is compressed. The real compression ratio and the real amount of compression data obtained after compressing may be different from the estimated value. But the error or difference between the real compression ratio and the real amount of compression data obtained by compressing and the estimated values are within an acceptable small range.

[0047] Thus, according to the disclosed embodiments, the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image is obtained and, based on the preset mapping relationship between the compression parameter and compression ratio, the estimated compression ratio of the to-be- compressed image is determined. Further, the estimated compression ratio of the to-be- compressed image is quickly assessed and eventually the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library where the to-be-compressed image is located is obtained, allowing the user to visually determine whether to compress the image library and avoiding the repeated compressing issues occurred in current technologies in which the compression ratio and the amount of compression data can only be determined after compression. Thus the disclosed embodiments save the user time and improve efficiency.

[0048] Figure 3 illustrates a flow chart of presetting a compression relationship database according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention. The disclosed method may be applied in the corresponding embodiments shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2 to preset the compression relationship database which stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio. Specifically, the method includes the following steps.

[0049] At the beginning, in S301, an image is searched and captured and a compression parameter of the obtained image is determined. The image may be obtained by searching locally stored photos captured by cameras, recorded videos, digital high-definition photos, or various images and videos obtained through network. The image may also be obtained by triggering a network communication module in a terminal to download from network images and videos with a variety of data size and image quality. Specifically, a search keyword may be generated. Based on the generated search keyword, images corresponding to the search keyword are searched from network. The generated keyword includes a combination of key words, such as "image" and/or "photo" and "ultra-high-definition", "high-definition", "standard-definition", etc. The generated keyword may also include a combination of "video" and "ultra-high-definition", "high-definition", "standard-definition", etc.

[0050] In S302, based on the amount of image data, each found image is categorized to obtain multiple image category sets corresponding to the amount of image data.

[0051] After a large number of images are obtained, based on image property, the amount of data of each image is read. Further, all the images are categorized according to the amount of image data. The amount of image data may be a data range. For example, images with the amount of data between 100K and 200K are categorized to a first image category set, images with the amount of data between 200K and 300K are categorized to a second image category set and so on. The amount of data upon which the categorization is based may be set according to the precision of subsequent compression ratios. The smaller the range of the amount of data is, more precise the subsequent obtained compression ratio is.

[0052] In S303, according to a specified image quality value and quality value step (a step value for increasing the quality value for a next image category set), the image quality value of each image category set is adjusted to obtain image subsets of each image category set under different quality values. For each image category set, the image quality value of each image within the image category set is adjusted. For example, for the first image category set, the image quality may be adjusted to obtain a first image subset with the image quality value of 10, a second image subset with the image quality value of 20 and so on. It should be noted that the higher the image quality, the greater the amount of image data is. Therefore, the image category set with greater amount of image data may contain more image subsets to cover more images and to obtain compression ratios corresponding to the amount of data and image quality. Similarly, the quality value step may be set based on precision. The smaller the quality value step is, more images may be covered and more precise the obtained image compression ratio is.

[0053] In S304, each obtained image subset is compressed to obtain a compression ratio. The compression ratio obtained by compressing each image subset is an average compression ratio of all images in the image subset. The average compression ratio may better represent the compression ratio of the images with the amount of image data and image quality value in the corresponding image subset.

[0054] In S305, based on the compression ratio of each image subset, the image quality value and the amount of image data of the corresponding image subset, a mapping relationship between a compression parameter, which includes the amount of image data and/or the image quality value, and a compression ratio is established. [0055] In S306, the established mapping relationship between the compression parameter and compression ratio is stored in a compression relationship database, which completes the preset of the compression relationship database. The established mapping relationship among the amount of image data, the image quality value and the compression ratio may be as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Mapping relationship table

[0056] According to Table 1, for the disclosed embodiments illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2, based on the obtained compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, the compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image may be quickly matched and found.

[0057] Thus, according to the disclosed embodiments, the terminal device may comprehensively obtain images with various amount of image data and image quality values by local searching and network searching, and quickly obtain the mapping relationship between the compression parameter, which includes the amount of image data and the image quality value, and the compression ratio to facilitate subsequent quick determination of the compression ratio of a to-be-compressed image. [0058] Figure 4 illustrates an exemplary image processing apparatus according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention. The disclosed image processing apparatus may be included in or coincide with an intelligent terminal, such as a smart phone, a tablet computer, a personal computer, an intelligent wearable device, etc. Specifically, as shown in Figure 4, the disclosed apparatus includes an obtaining module 1, a finding module 2, and an image processing module 3.

[0059] The obtaining module 1 is configured to obtain a to-be-compressed image and determine a compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image. The finding module 2 is configured to find a compression ratio, which forms a mapping relationship with the

compression parameter, in a preset compression relationship database, wherein the compression relation database stores the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio. The image processing module 3 is configured to determine the found compression ratio as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image and to prompt a user with image compression information based on the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image. Prompting the image compression information can include prompting the estimated compression ratio or prompting an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

[0060] The to-be-compressed image may be a photo or a video captured by a camera, or an image, video, etc., downloaded online. The compression parameter includes various parameters which affect the image compression ratio or the amount of compression data.

Specifically, the compression parameter may include the amount of image data and/or the image quality value of the to-be-compressed image. [0061] The amount of image data (e.g., number of bytes) of the to-be-compressed image obtained in the obtaining module 1 may be obtained directly from property information of a corresponding photo, video and image, etc. The image quality value of the to-be-compressed image may be calculated based on the noise, texture and color difference in the image and video. Of course, the image quality may further be obtained by comparing a quantization table information (which is a string of numbers A) read from an image file (e.g., a JPG file) header with a preset quantization reference table, wherein the quantization reference table is a corresponding or mapping table between all quantitative information and image quality values, and the image quality is the corresponding image quality value of A in the reference quantization table. The quantization reference table may adopt the standard published by JPEG official website.

[0062] The compression relationship database may specifically include a mapping table, wherein a one-to-one mapping between the compression parameter and the compression ratio is recorded in the mapping table in the compression relationship database. After the obtaining module 1 determines the compression parameter, which includes the amount of image data, image quality value and etc., of the to-be-compressed image, the finding module 2 may directly find the corresponding compression ratio in the mapping table according to the mapping relationship.

[0063] The compression ratio corresponding to the compression parameter is obtained by compressing a large number of training images. Specifically, since a compression ratio of an image, in general, is closely related to an amount of image data and image quality value of the image, images with image quality value in a same quality range and with amount of image data in a same amount range may form a training image set. And by compressing the training image set, a compression ratio of the images with image quality in the same quality range and the amount of image data in the same amount range may be obtained. So on and so forth, by compressing multiple different training image sets (images in the different training image sets have different quality value range and different amount of data range), a relationship between the compression parameter, which includes the quality and the amount of data, etc., and the compression ratio may be obtained. Eventually the obtained mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio is stored in the preset compression relationship database.

[0064] If the image which needs to be compressed at the moment only includes the to-be- compressed image, the image processing module 3 may prompt a user with a specific estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, and the specific estimated compression ratio is the image compression information. Or based on the estimated compression ratio and the amount of image data of the to-be-compressed image, an estimated amount of compression data is obtained by multiplying the two and the estimated amount of compression data is prompted as the image compression information to the user. The image processing module 3 may further be configured to prompt the user with the image compression information such as compression ratio or amount of image data in the form of text box.

[0065] Before compressing the to-be-compressed image, the disclosed image processing apparatus may obtain the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, obtain the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image according to the preset mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio, quickly assess the compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image or a image library and prompt the related image compression information to the user, thus avoiding the repeated compressing problems occurred in current technologies, saving user time and improving compression efficiency.

[0066] Further, Figure 5 illustrates a schematic block diagram of another image processing apparatus according to disclosed embodiments of the present invention. As shown in Figure 5, in addition to the obtaining module 1, the finding module 2 and the image processing module 3 as illustrated in Figure 4, the disclosed apparatus further includes an image library processing module 4, a compressing module 5, a searching module 6, a mapping processing module 7 and a storage module 8.

[0067] The image library processing module 4 may be configured to determine the estimated compression ratios of the rest to-be-compressed images in the image library where the to-be-compressed image is located and to prompt the user with the compression information of the image library according to the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be- compressed image. First, the estimated compression ratios of the rest to-be-compressed images in the image library where the to-be-compressed image is located may be found through the finding module 2 based on the compression parameter determined in the obtaining module 1. Then, based on the estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image in the image library, the image library processing module 4 may calculate the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library and prompt the estimated total amount of compression data to the user as the compression information of the image library.

[0068] More specifically, as shown in Figure 6, the image library processing module 4 may further include a determining unit 30, a first calculating unit 31 , a second calculating unit 32 and a prompting unit 33. [0069] The determining unit 30 is configured to determine the estimated compression ratios of the rest to-be-compressed images in the image library where the to-be-compressed image is located. The first calculating unit 31 is configured to calculate the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library according to the amount of image data and the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image in the image library. The second calculating unit 32 is configured to add up the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library to obtain the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library. The prompting unit 33 is configured to prompt the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library as the image compression information to the user.

[0070] The compressing module 5 is configured to detect whether a user event to select a compressing process of the image library is generated after prompting the user with the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library. If the user event to select the

compressing process is generated, the compressing module 5 compresses the image library. After prompting the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library to the user, the processing module 5 may use current compressing technologies to directly compress the corresponding to-be-compressed images of the entire image library. Of course, a real compression ratio and the amount of compression data obtained by the compressing process may be different from their estimates, but the error or difference between the obtained real compression rate and the real amount of compression data and their corresponding estimates are in a small and acceptable range.

[0071] The searching module 6 is configured to search and obtain or capture images, and to determine the compression parameter of the obtained images. The mapping processing module 7 is configured to obtain the compression ratio by compressing the obtained image, and to establish the mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio. The storage module 8 is configured to store the established mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio in the compression relationship database to complete the preset of the compression relationship database.

[0072] Further, referring to Figure 7, the mapping processing module 7 includes a categorizing unit 51, an adjusting unit 52, a compressing unit 52 and an establishing unit 54. The categorizing unit 51 is configured to categorize each image obtained by searching based on the amount of data to obtain multiple image category sets corresponding to the amount of data.

[0073] The adjusting unit 52 is configured to adjust the image quality value of each image category set based on a specified image quality value and quality step to obtain the image subsets of each image category under different quality value. The compressing unit 53 is configured to compress each obtained image subset to obtain the compression ratio. Further, the establishing unit 54 is configured to establish the mapping relationship between the compression parameter, which includes the amount of image data and the image quality value, and the compression ratio according to the compression ratio of each image subset, the image quality value of the image subset and the amount of data of the image category set corresponding to the image subset. In addition, when images are being searched, the mapping processing module 7 is further configured to generate a search keyword and to search the images in the network based on the generated search keyword.

[0074] The searching module 6 may search local stored photos captured by cameras, recorded videos, high-definition photos, and various images, videos obtained online. The searching module 6 may also trigger a network communication module of a terminal to download images and videos with a variety of amount of image data and image quality from the network. Specifically, the searching module 6 may directly generate the search keyword, and to search the images from the network based on the generated search keyword. The generated search keyword may include a combination keyword of image and/or photo with ultra-definition, high-definition and standard-definition, etc., or a combination keyword of video with ultra- definition, high-definition and standard-definition, etc.

[0075] After obtaining a large number of images, the categorizing unit 51 reads the amount of data of each image according to the image property and categorizes all the images based on their amount of data. For example, images with the amount of data between 100K and 200K are categorized to a first image category set, images with the amount of data between

200K and 300K are categorized to a second image category set and so on, wherein, the amount of data upon which the categorization is based may be set according to the precision of subsequent compression ratio. The smaller the range of the amount of data is, the higher the precision of the subsequent obtained compression ratio is. [0076] For each image category set, the adjusting unit 52 is configured to adjust the image quality value of each image in the image category set. For example, for the first image category set, image quality can be adjusted to obtain a first image subset with the image quality value of 10, a second image subset with the image quality value of 20 and so on. It should be noted that the higher the image quality, the greater the amount of image data is. Therefore for the image category set with greater amount of image data, more image subsets may be obtained to better cover more images and to obtain compression ratios corresponding to the amount of data and image quality. Similarly, the image quality value step may be set according to precision. The smaller the quality value step is, more images may be covered and more precise the obtained image compression ratio will be.

[0077] The compressing unit 53 is configured to obtain the compression ratio by compressing each image subset, and the compression ratio is an average compression ratio of all images in the image subset. The average compression ratio may better represent the

compression ratio of the images in the image subset with the corresponding amount of image data and image quality value. The establishing unit 54 is configured to establish the mapping relationship among the amount of image data, image quality value and compression ratio as shown in Table 1.

[0078] The disclosed embodiments of the present invention obtain the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, obtain the estimated compression ratio of the to-be- compressed image according to the preset mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio, and quickly assess the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image and eventually obtain the estimated total amount of compression data of the corresponding image library. Thus the disclosed embodiments of the present invention allow users to visually determine whether to compress the image library, avoiding the repeated compressing issues occurred in current technologies, which can only determine the compression ratio and the amount of compression data after compressing, saving user time and improving efficiency.

[0079] The disclosed embodiments of the present invention may comprehensively obtain images with various amount of image data and image quality values by local search and network search, and quickly obtain the mapping relationship between the compression parameter, which includes the amount of image data and the image quality value, and the compression ratio to facilitate a quick determination of the compression ratio of a to-be-compressed image.

[0080] Those ordinary skill in the art may understand that the entire or part of the process of the method according to the disclosed embodiments of the present invention may be implemented by a computer-program-relevant hardware. The computer program may be stored in a computer accessible storage medium. When the program is executed, it may include the above processes according to the disclosed embodiments of the present invention. Wherein, the storage medium may be a magnetic disk, optical disk, read-only memory (ROM) or random access memory (RAM), etc.

[0081] The above only describes certain embodiments of the present invention, and does not limit the scope of the present invention. Any equivalent modifications and changes in accordance with the claims of the present invention are still covered by the scope of the present invention.

INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY AND ADVANTAGEOUS EFFECTS

[0082] Without limiting the scope of any claim and/or the specification, examples of industrial applicability and certain advantageous effects of the disclosed embodiments are listed for illustrative purposes. Various alternations, modifications, or equivalents to the technical solutions of the disclosed embodiments can be obvious to those skilled in the art and can be included in this disclosure.

[0083] The disclosed embodiments provide special image processing applications for terminal devices to improve image processing convenience and efficiencies. Using the disclosed methods, the terminal devices obtain the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, obtain the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image according to the preset mapping relationship between the compression parameter and the compression ratio, and quickly assess the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image and eventually obtain the estimated total amount of compression data of the corresponding image library. Thus, users can visually determine whether to compress the image library, avoiding the repeated compressing issues occurred in current technologies, which can only determine the compression ratio and the amount of compression data after compressing, and saving user time and improving efficiency.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. An image processing method, comprising:

obtaining a to-be-compressed image and determining a compression parameter of the to- be-compressed image;

finding a compression ratio having a mapping relationship with the compression parameter in a preset compression relationship database, wherein the compression relationship database stores mapping relationships between compression parameters and compression ratios; and

determining the found compression ratio as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be- compressed image and prompting a user with image compression information according to the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image,

wherein prompting the user with the image compression information includes prompting the estimated compression ratio or prompting an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining estimated compression ratios of remaining to-be-compressed images in an image library in which the to-be-compression image is located;

according to the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image, prompting the user with compression information of the image library in which the to- be-compressed image is located.

3. The method according to claim 2, wherein, according to the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be-compressed image, prompting the user with the compression information of the image library in which the to-be-compressed is located includes:

based on an amount of data and the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be- compressed image in the image library, calculating an estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library;

adding up the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library and obtaining an estimated total amount of compression data of the image library; and

prompting the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library as the image compression information to the user.

4. The method according to claim 3, further comprising:

after prompting the user with the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library, detecting whether an user event to select a compressing process of the image library is generated; and

when the user event to select the compressing process is generated, compressing the image library.

5. The method according to any claims 1-4, before obtaining the to-be-compressed image and determining the compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image, further including: searching and obtaining images and determining compression parameters of the obtained images;

obtaining the compression ratios after compressing the obtained images and establishing the mapping relationships between the compression parameters and the compression ratios;

storing the established mapping relationships between the compression parameters and the compression ratios in the compression relationship database to achieve the preset of the compression relationship database.

6. The method according to claim5, wherein, the compression parameter includes the amount of data and the quality value of the image, and compressing the found images to obtain the compression ratios and establishing the mapping relationships between the compression parameters and the compression ratios includes:

based on the amount of data, categorizing each image to obtain multiple image category sets corresponding to the amount of data;

based on a specified image quality value and quality value step, adjusting the quality value of images in each image category set to obtain image subsets of each image category set under different quality values;

compressing each image subset to obtain compression ratio of each image subset; and according to the compression ratio of each image subset, the quality value

corresponding to the image subset, and the amount of data of the image category set corresponding to the image subset, establishing the mapping relationships between the compression parameter which includes the amount of data and the quality value and the compression ratio.

7. The method according to claim 5, wherein, searching the images includes:

based on a generated search keyword, searching the images corresponding to the search keyword online.

8. An image processing apparatus, comprising:

an obtaining module configured to obtain a to-be-compressed image and to determine a compression parameter of the to-be-compressed image;

a finding module configured to find a compression ratio having a mapping relationship with the compressing parameter in a preset compression relationship database, wherein the compression relationship database stores mapping relationships between compression parameters and compression ratios; and

an image processing module configured to determine the found compression ratio as an estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image and, based on the estimated compression ratio of the to-be-compressed image, to prompt a user with image compression information,

wherein, to prompt the user with the image compression information, the image processing module is further configured to prompt the user with the estimated compression ratio or an estimated amount of compression data calculated based on the estimated compression ratio.

9. The apparatus according to claim 8, wherein:

the image processing module is configured to obtain the estimated compression ratios of remaining to-be-compressed images in an image library in which the to-be-compressed image is located and, based on the obtained estimated compression ratio of each to-be- compressed image, to prompt the user with compression information of the image library in which the to-be-compressed image is located.

10. The apparatus according to claim 9, wherein the image processing module further

includes:

a determining unit configured to determine the estimated compression ratios of the remaining to-be-compressed images in the image library in which the to-be-compressed image is located;

a first calculating unit configured to, based on the amount of data of each to-be- compressed image in the image library and the determined estimated compression ratio, calculate an estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library;

a second calculating unit configured to add up the estimated amount of compression data of each to-be-compressed image in the image library to obtain an estimated total amount of compression data of the image library; and

a prompting unit configured to prompt the obtained estimated total amount of compression data of the image library as the image compression information to the user.

11. The apparatus according to claim 10, further including: a compressing module configured to, after prompting the estimated total amount of compression data of the image library, detect whether a user event to select a compressing processing of the image library is generated and, when the user event to select the compressing process is generated, to compress the image library.

12. The apparatus according to any claims 8-11, further including:

a searching module configured to search and obtain images and to determine the compression parameters of the obtained images;

a mapping processing module configured to obtain the compression ratios after compressing the obtained images and to establishing the mapping relationships between the compression parameters and the compression ratios;

a storage module configured to store the established mapping relationships between the compression parameters and the compression ratios in the compression relationship database to achieve the preset of the compression relationship database.

13. The apparatus according to claim 12, wherein the mapping processing module includes: a categorizing unit configured to, based on the amount of data, categorize each obtained image to obtain multiple image category sets corresponding to the amount of data; an adjusting unit configured to, according to a specified image quality value and quality value step, adjust the quality value of images in each image category set to obtain the image subsets of each image category set under different quality values; and a compressing unit configured to, according to the compression ratio of each image subset, the quality value corresponding to the image subset, and the amount of data of the image category set corresponding to the image subset, establish the mapping relationship between the compression parameter, which includes the amount of data and the quality value, and the compression ratios.

14. The apparatus according to claim 12, wherein:

when being configured to search images, the mapping processing module is further configured to generate a search keyword to search the images corresponding to the search keyword online.

15. A terminal includes the apparatus according to any claims 8-14.