Image processing apparatus and image processing method

• US 9,204,034 B2
• Filed: 12/03/2013
• Issued: 12/01/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/27/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha (Canon Inc.)
• Inventors: Yoshida, Nobukazu
• Primary Examiner(s): Cunningham, Gregory F
• Application Number:
  US14/095,250
• Publication Number:
  US 20140185870A1
• Time in Patent Office: 728 Days
• Field of Search: 382/103
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/611 where the recognised objects include parts of the human body

Abstract

An image processing apparatus includes an object distance information acquisition unit configured to acquire information regarding a distance to an object detected from acquired image data, a distance information acquisition unit configured to divide the image data into small areas and acquire object distance information for each of the small areas, a determination unit configured to determine a blurring level for each of the small areas, and a blurring processing unit configured to perform blurring processing on the image data based on the blurring level. The determination unit identifies an object located within a predetermined distance from a main object based on the distance information acquired by the object distance information acquisition unit, and determines a distance group of the identified object as a non-blur area.

Claims

1. An image processing apparatus comprising:

an acquisition unit configured to acquire image data;

a detection unit configured to detect objects from the image data;

a selection unit configured to select a main object from the detected objects;

an object distance information acquisition unit configured to acquire information regarding distance to the detected objects;

a distance information acquisition unit configured to divide the image data into small areas, and acquire object distance information for each of the small areas;

a distance grouping unit configured to, based on the distance information, group the small areas into distance groups defined by different distance ranges;

a determination unit configured to determine a blurring level for each of the distance groups; and

a blurring processing unit configured to perform blurring processing on the image data based on the blurring level,

wherein the determination unit identifies an object located within a predetermined distance from the main object, based on the distance information acquired by the object distance information acquisition unit, and determines areas corresponding to a distance group of the identified object as a same blurring level as an area corresponding to the main object.

2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination unit determines a first blurring level according to a difference in the distance information between each of the small areas and a main object area, identifies an object located within a predetermined distance from the main object based on the distance information acquired by the object distance information acquisition unit, and applies a second blurring level lower than the first blurring level to a distance group of the identified object.

3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the distance grouping unit generates a histogram of the distance information and groups the distance information based on the generated histogram.

4. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination unit changes a method for determining the blurring level based on whether each of the small areas overlaps an object detected by the detection unit.

5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the determination unit determines a first blurring level according to a difference in the distance information between each of the small areas and a main face area, determines to apply the first blurring level to each of the small areas that do not overlap a face area detected by the detection unit, and determines to apply a second blurring level lower than the first blurring level to each of the small areas that overlap the face area detected by the detection unit.

6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the determination unit determines each of the small areas which do not overlap an object area detected by the detection unit as a non-blur area if a difference in the distance information between each of the small area and the main object area is a first threshold value or smaller, and determines each of the small areas which overlap the object area detected by the detection unit as a non-blur area if a difference in the distance information between each of the small area and the main object area is a second threshold value or smaller, the second threshold value being larger than the first threshold value.

7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit performs face detection processing to detect a face as an object from the image data.

8. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the blurring processing unit performs the blurring processing by separately performing a plurality of different blurring processes on the entire image data to generate multi-level pieces of blurred image data, and then combines a piece of the blurred image data with each of the small areas based on the distance information.

9. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the blurring processing unit performs the blurring processing by applying different filter processing with a different number of taps to each of the small areas.

10. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the acquisition unit receives a light flux incident on an imaging optical system including a focusing lens to generate image data.

11. The image processing apparatus according to claim 10, wherein the object distance information acquisition unit acquires the distance information of each of the small areas based on an evaluation value obtained by moving the focusing lens for each of the small areas.

12. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the object distance information acquisition unit is a distance measurement sensor capable of measuring a distance based on a phase difference.

15. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination unit determines areas corresponding to a distance group of the main object and areas corresponding to a distance group of the identified object as non-blur areas.

16. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the object distance information acquisition unit and the distance information acquisition unit acquire distances at a depth direction in the image data.

13. A method for image processing comprising:

acquiring image data;

detecting objects from the image data;

selecting a main object from the detected objects;

acquiring information regarding distances to the detected objects;

dividing the image data into small areas, and acquiring object distance information for each of the small areas;

grouping the small areas into distance groups defined by different distance ranges, based on the distance information;

determining a blurring level for each of the distance groups;

performing blurring processing on the image data based on the blurring level; and

identifying an object located within a predetermined distance from the main object based on the acquired object distance information, and determining areas corresponding to a distance group of the identified object as a same blurring level as an area corresponding to the main object.

14. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a program that causes a computer to execute the method according to claim 13.

17. An image processing apparatus comprising:

an acquisition unit configured to acquire image data;

a detection unit configured to detect objects from the image data;

a selection unit configured to select a main object from the detected objects;

an object distance information acquisition unit configured to acquire information regarding distance to the detected objects;

a distance information acquisition unit configured to divide the image data into small areas, and acquire object distance information for each of the small areas;

a distance grouping unit configured to, based on the distance information, group the small areas into distance groups defined by different distance ranges;

a determination unit configured to determine a blurring level for each of the distance groups; and

a blurring processing unit configured to perform blurring processing on the image data based on the blurring level,

wherein the determination unit determines a first blurring level according to a difference in the distance information between each of the small areas and a main face area, determines to apply the first blurring level to each of the small areas that do not overlap a face area detected by the detection unit, and determines to apply a second blurring level lower than the first blurring level to each of the small areas that overlap the face area detected by the detection unit.

18. A method for image processing comprising:

acquiring image data;

detecting objects from the image data;

selecting a main object from the detected objects;

acquiring information regarding distances to the detected objects;

dividing the image data into small areas, and acquiring object distance information for each of the small areas;

grouping the small areas into distance groups defined by different distance ranges, based on the distance information;

determining a blurring level for each of the distance groups;

performing blurring processing on the image data based on the blurring level; and

determining a first blurring level according to a difference in the distance information between each of the small areas and a main face area, determining to apply the first blurring level to each of the small areas that do not overlap a face area detected in the detection, and

determining to apply a second blurring level lower than the first blurring level to each of the small areas that overlap the face area.