IMAGE FILE EDITING APPARATUS AND METHOD, AND PROGRAM

• US 20090245666A1
• Filed: 04/01/2009
• Published: 10/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/01/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.)
• Inventors: Yamashina, Saneyuki
• Granted Patent: US 9,247,099 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/235
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00442 Simultaneous viewing of a plurality of images, e.g. using a mosaic display arrangement of thumbnails
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00453 arranged in a two dimensional array
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00461 marking or otherwise tagging one or more displayed image, e.g. for selective reproduction
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00474 outputting a plurality of functional options, e.g. scan, copy or print
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/215 Recording a sequence of still pictures, e.g. burst mode
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/2166 for mass storage, e.g. in document filing systems information retrieval G06F16/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/12 Selection from among a plurality of transforms or standards, e.g. selection between discrete cosine transform [DCT] and sub-band transform or selection between H.263 and H.264
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/17 the unit being an image region, e.g. an object
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2101/00 Still video cameras
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/212 Selecting different recording or reproducing modes, e.g. high or low resolution, field or frame
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/3226 of identification information or the like, e.g. ID code, index, title, part of an image, reduced-size image
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/3273 Display

Abstract

An image file editing method includes an analysis step of analyzing a compression format of each of a plurality of images included in a plurality of image files, a display step of displaying analysis results together with thumbnail images each of which corresponds to one of the plurality of images, a selection step of selecting images based on the thumbnail images, a determination step of determining, based on the results obtained in the analysis step, whether or not a compression format of each selected image is changeable, a compression step of applying a changed compression format, and an output step of collectively outputting selected images as a single image file.

Claims

1. An image file editing method comprising:

an input step of receiving a plurality of image files;

an analysis step of analyzing a compression format of each of a plurality of images included in the plurality of image files;

a display step of displaying a list of thumbnail images each of which corresponds to one of the plurality of images and displaying analysis results obtained in the analysis step together with the thumbnail images;

a selection step of selecting images from among the plurality of images displayed in the display step;

a determination step of determining, based on the results obtained in the analysis step, whether or not each image selected in the selection step is modifiable to have a compression format in which a first compression format is used for a first image region and a second compression format different from the first compression format is used for a second image region when the image includes the second image region;

a compression step of compressing, using the compression format, an image that is determined in the determination step to be modifiable to have the compression format; and

an output step of collectively outputting a plurality of images selected in the selection step as a single image file so that the single image file includes an image that is not compressed using the compression format in the compression step and an image compressed using the compression format in the compression step.

2. The image file editing method according to claim 1, wherein the image compressed using the compression format in the compression step comprises an image including a first image region and a second image region that are configured as different layers, and

wherein in the analysis step, it is determined whether or not each of the plurality of images has a layered structure.

3. The image file editing method according to claim 2, wherein the image compressed using the compression format in the compression step includes a first image region and a second image region, the first image region being a background region, the second image region being a character region,

wherein the analysis step includes the step of performing an analysis as to whether or not each of the plurality of images includes a character region, and

wherein the determination step includes the step of determining that an image that does not include a character region is not modifiable to have the compression format.

4. The image file editing method according to claim 3, wherein the analysis step includes the steps of performing an analysis as to whether or not a compression format of a character region in each of the plurality of images is different from a compression format of a background region, and determining, when the compression format of the character region is different from the compression format of the background region, that the compression format of the character region is the second compression format and is not changeable.

5. The image file editing method according to claim 2, wherein the analysis step includes the step of performing an analysis as to whether or not each of the plurality of images has text data added thereto, and

wherein the image file editing method further comprises an addition step of performing character recognition on an image having no text data added thereto and adding text data to the image.

6. The image file editing method according to claim 2, wherein the analysis step includes the step of performing an analysis as to whether or not each of the plurality of images has text data added thereto, and

wherein text position information is extracted from image data of an image having text data added thereto and a character region is set based on the text position information.

7. An image file editing apparatus comprising:

an input unit configured to receive a plurality of image files;

an analysis unit configured to analyze a compression format of each of a plurality of images included in the plurality of image files;

a display unit configured to display a list of thumbnail images each of which corresponds to one of the plurality of images and displaying analysis results obtained in the analysis unit together with the thumbnail images;

a selection unit configured to select images from among the plurality of images displayed by the display unit;

a determination unit configured to determine, based on the results obtained by the analysis unit, whether or not each image selected by the selection unit is modifiable to have a compression format in which a first compression format is used for a first image region and a second compression format different from the first compression format is used for a second image region when the image includes the second image region;

a compression unit configured to compress, using the compression format, an image that is determined by the determination unit to be modifiable to have the compression format; and

an output unit configured to collectively output a plurality of images selected by the selection unit as a single image file so that the single image file includes an image that is not compressed using the compression format by the compression unit and an image compressed using the compression format by the compression unit.

8. A program recorded on a computer-readable recording medium, the program being executed by a computer, the program comprising:

an input step of receiving a plurality of image files;

an analysis step of analyzing a compression format of each of a plurality of images included in the plurality of image files;

a display step of displaying a list of thumbnail images each of which corresponds to one of the plurality of images and displaying analysis results obtained in the analysis step together with the thumbnail images;

a selection step of selecting images from among the plurality of images displayed in the display step;

a determination step of determining, based on the results obtained in the analysis step, whether or not each image selected in the selection step is modifiable to have a compression format in which a first compression format is used for a first image region and a second compression format different from the first compression format is used for a second image region when the image includes the second image region;

a compression step of compressing, using the compression format, an image that is determined in the determination step to be modifiable to have the compression format; and

an output step of collectively outputting a plurality of images selected in the selection step as a single image file so that the single image file includes an image that is not compressed using the compression format in the compression step and an image compressed using the compression format in the compression step.