PRINTING APPARATUS, COMPOSITE IMAGE DATA GENERATING APPARATUS, AND COMPOSITE IMAGE DATA GENERATING PROGRAM

• US 20110029901A1
• Filed: 03/23/2010
• Published: 02/03/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 07/31/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
• Original Assignee: Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
• Inventors: ITO, Yuichi, TAKATA, Masayuki, GOTO, Kazuma, NAKAMURA, Atsushi, KAWAI, Narumi
• Granted Patent: US 8,837,023 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/764
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/60 Editing figures and text; Combining figures or text
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/3876 Recombination of partial images to recreate the original image

Abstract

A printing apparatus which prints a composite image formed of a background image and an input image on a recording medium includes: a display; a display image data generating section which generates data of a display image to be displayed on the display; a display controller which controls the display; an input region determining mechanism which determines at least one input region in which the input image is to be inputted on the background image displayed on the display; an image capturing mechanism which captures the input image inputted via the display; a composite image data generating section which generates data of the composite image from data of the background image and the input image captured by the image capturing mechanism; and a printing mechanism which prints the composite image on the recording medium based on the data of the composite image generated by the composite image data generating section.

Claims

1. A printing apparatus which prints a composite image formed of a background image and an input image on a recording medium, the apparatus comprising:

a display;

a display image data generating section which generates data of a display image to be displayed on the display;

a display controller which controls the display to display the display image based on the data of the display image generated by the display image data generating section;

an input region determining mechanism which determines at least one input region in which the input image is to be inputted on the background image displayed on the display;

an image capturing mechanism which captures the input image inputted via the display;

a composite image data generating section which generates data of the composite image from data of the background image and data of the input image captured by the image capturing mechanism; and

a printing mechanism which prints the composite image on the recording medium based on the data of the composite image generated by the composite image data generating section,

wherein when the input region determining mechanism determines the at least one input region, the display image data generating section generates data of an enlarged image of a portion which is included in the background image and includes the at least one input region as the data of the display image, and

after the display controller controls the display to display the enlarged image based on the data of the enlarged image, the image capturing mechanism captures an image inputted in the at least one input region which is included in the enlarged image displayed on the display, as the input image.

2. The printing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the input image is an image being drawn by a user directly on the display.

3. The printing apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein when the input region determining mechanism determines a plurality of input regions, the display image data generating section generates the data of the enlarged image of the portion which is included in the background image and includes one input region among the input regions so that the portion includes at least a part of another input region which is different from the one input region.

4. The printing apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the at least one input region is a region extending in a first and second directions, and

when the first direction inclines relative to an up and down direction of the display screen, the display image data generating section generates the data of the enlarged image which is rotated so that the first direction coincides with the up and down direction of the display screen, as the data of the display image.

5. The printing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein

the display image data generating section generates data of an image to which a mark indicating the first direction of the input region is added as the data of the display image.

6. The printing apparatus according to claim 4, further comprising a region changing mechanism which changes at least one of a position, a size, and the first direction of the at least one input region determined by the input region determining mechanism together with the input image which is inputted in the input region.

7. A composite image data generating apparatus which generates a composite image formed of a background image and an input image, the apparatus comprising:

a display;

a display image data generating section which generates data of a display image to be displayed on the display;

a display controller which controls the display to display the display image based on the data of the display image generated by the display image data generating section;

an input region determining mechanism which determines at least one input region in which the input image is to be inputted on the background image displayed on the display;

an image capturing mechanism which captures the input image inputted via the display; and

a composite image data generating section which generates data of the composite image from data of the background image and data of the input image captured by the image capturing mechanism;

wherein when the input region determining mechanism determines the at least one input region, the display image data generating section generates data of an enlarged image of a portion which is included in the background image and includes the at least one input region as the data of the display image, and

after the display controller controls the display to display the enlarged image based on the data of the enlarged image, the image capturing mechanism captures an image inputted in the at least one input region which is included in the enlarged image displayed on the display, as the input image.

8. The composite image data generating apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the input image is an image being drawn by a user directly on the display.

9. The composite image data generating apparatus according to claim 7,

wherein when the input region determining mechanism determines a plurality of input regions, the display image data generating section generates the data of the enlarged image of the portion which is included in the background image and includes one input region among the input regions so that the portion includes at least a part of another input region which is different from the one input region.

10. A composite image data generating program for a composite image data generating apparatus which has a display and which generates a composite image formed of a background image and an input image, the program comprising:

an input region determining step for determining at least one input region in which the input image is to be inputted on the background image displayed on the display;

an enlarged image data generating step for generating data of an enlarged image of a portion which is included in the background image and includes the at least one input region determined in the input region determining step;

an enlarged image display step for displaying the enlarged image on the display based on the data of the enlarged image generated in the enlarged image data generating step;

an image capturing step for capturing an image inputted in the at least one input region which is included in the enlarged image displayed in the enlarged image display step, as the input image; and

a composite image data generating step for generating data of the composite image from image data of the background image and data of the input image captured in the image capturing step.

11. The composite image data generating apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the input image is an image being drawn by a user directly on the display.

12. The composite image data generating apparatus according to claim 10,

wherein when a plurality of input regions are determined in the input region determining step, the data of the enlarged image of the portion which is included in the background image and includes one input region among the input regions is generated so that the portion includes at least a part of another input region which is different from the one input region.