JPS641782B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method for storing image data in a memory device in a layout scanner system, and particularly a method for storing image data obtained using an image scanning recording device such as a color scanner in advance in a memory device. The present invention relates to a method of storing image data in a memory device in a layout scanner system in which the image data is sequentially called out to a monitor device to collect images.

Recently, multiple picture data obtained using an image scanning device (input scanner) as an input device and character (line drawing) data from a character input device are individually stored in a large-capacity memory device such as a disk memory. Image data and text data on CRT
A so-called layout scanner system has been developed, which displays images on a monitor device such as a display device, uses a digitizer, etc., and performs image collection under the control of a CPU (central processing unit). It has been put into practical use. In this type of system, it is known to obtain character data by scanning character (line drawing) originals with an image scanning recording device in the same way as picture originals, and the applicant of this application also filed Japanese Patent Application No. 57-6650. 57
-18184, filed as patent application No. 57-39877.

By the way, in general, the sampling pixel size of a pattern in a color scanner is about 50 μm square, and each color separation signal of B (blue), G (green), and R (red) obtained by sampling an original image of, for example, 10 cm x 10 cm with this pixel size is When each color signal of Y (yellow), M (magenta), C (cyan), and K (black) is subjected to various image signal processing such as color correction and gradation correction, 8 bits/pixel are used. The amount of data is
Each is 4MB, making a total of 16MB. In contrast, color CRTs used as monitor devices during layout processing typically have a resolution of 500 x 500 pixels, and the amount of image data for each color is only 250 Kbytes. Therefore, if you try to display the original image of 10cm x 10cm on the entire surface of the monitor device, you will need 4MB of data.
It is necessary to compress it to 250K bytes, or 1/16.

Therefore, if you try to read 16MB of data from the disk memory and then compress the data using CPU calculation processing, it will take a considerable amount of time just to read the data from the disk memory, and furthermore, the compression calculation processing will take a considerable amount of time. It will take time. Furthermore, during this compression calculation process, the data from the disk memory is simply compressed into one out of several pieces (in the above example, the vertical and horizontal 4 x 4
If you display only 1 pixel out of 16 pixels, the image quality on the monitor will deteriorate significantly, and in order to compensate for this, it is necessary to average several pieces of data and display it. The drawback was that it took up a lot of time, making it impractical.

The method according to the present invention is particularly effective for such a layout scanner system, and it sequentially writes image signals corresponding to a plurality of original images as they are into a memory device and displays them on a monitor device during layout processing. Therefore, data processing time during layout processing can be significantly reduced by writing an image signal compressed at an arbitrary ratio into the relevant memory device, or by writing it into a separate memory device. The purpose of this invention is to provide a method for storing image data, which will be explained below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an example of a layout scanner system for implementing the method according to the present invention. First, image signals corresponding to a plurality of original images sequentially photoelectrically scanned by a color scanner 7 are sent to a buffer memory 8. The image data is then stored in the disk memory 9 as output image data.

Next, this output image data is transferred to the disk memory 14.

This disk memory 9 to disk memory 14
For data transfer to the media exchange type, the disk memory 9 may be manually replaced with the disk memory 14; if the disk is a fixed disk, the data may be transferred between the two disk memories 9 and 14, or The disk memory 9 may be used as the disk memory 14 while being fixed.

In conventional layout scanner systems, such output image data is used to perform image aggregation as described below, for example. That is, contour information indicating which image is to be placed at which position on a certain page is separately input by the digitizer 2 to the buffer memory 12 via the CPU 1, and first, the contour information is displayed on the monitor device 13. Next, it is read from the disk memory 14,
An image corresponding to the image data compressed each time at a predetermined ratio by the calculation of the CPU 1 is displayed on the monitor device 13 according to the contour information by an image processor controlled by the movable switch 3 via the CPU 1. 11, and the position coordinates are written into addresses in the buffer memory 12 that have a predetermined relationship with the coordinate system of the monitor device 13. The location information of each such image is
The CPU 1 manages the data, and the data containing the final duplicate images is output to the disk memory 1.
It is used as data when creating 5.

The image processor 11 is composed of a so-called array processor that mainly uses a lookup table memory, so it can use the lookup table memory to correct the gradation of a duplicated image, or to partially change the tone. It is also possible to modify. Note that the image processor 11
Inside is the patent application No. 56-144792 filed by the applicant.
A conversion circuit such as that disclosed in
It includes circuits for converting the K color signals into blue B, green G, and red R data for display.

By repeating such operations for all the original images, an image set of duplicate images is performed, but when each image is displayed on the monitor device 13, as described above, each time the CPU 1 compresses the data for display. Creating image data takes a very long time and is not practical.

Therefore, in the method according to the present invention, the image signal from the color scanner 7 is transferred to the disk memory 9.
When storing data into the color scanner 7, an image signal is written in parallel to the line memory of the compression circuit 5, which is composed of a plurality of line memories, etc., and compressed image data is created based on instructions from the CPU 1. When the image signal is stored in the disk memory 9, the compressed image data is sequentially stored in an address different from the address where the image signal is stored.

For example, suppose that an image signal is sampled by a scanner with m pixels in the vertical column and n pixels in the horizontal column. In order to display the image on a CRT display device (having a pixel count of 1), it is necessary to compress the image signal vertically or horizontally at the higher compression ratio of m/500 or n/500.
Therefore, when the CPU 1 calculates the compression ratio and instructs the compression circuit 5, the compression circuit 5 compresses (averages) the image signal according to this compression ratio. Various methods can be considered for compressing data in the compression circuit 5, but for example, image data of scanning lines corresponding to a compression ratio (if m/500 is the compression ratio, the number of lines corresponding to that value) is first The image data may be written into the line memory of a book, read out from each line memory for each address area corresponding to the compression ratio, and averaged.

Furthermore, in the above embodiment, the compressed image data for display is stored in a different address of the same disk memory 9 where the image signal from the color scanner 7 is stored, but other than the disk memory 9 It is also possible to store compressed image data for display in the memory device.

In this case, the work of storing image signals from the color scanner 7 in the disk memory 9 and the work of storing image data for display in a separate memory device can be performed simultaneously, further reducing data processing time. becomes possible.

As described above, the method according to the present invention is useful for recording duplicate images picked up by an input scanning device such as a color scanner in a layout scanner system that records duplicate images corresponding to a plurality of original images as a set of images. Along with the image data of
Compressed image data for display on a monitor device during image collection is stored in the same memory device or in separate memory devices, so the time required for data processing is shorter than in conventional systems of this type. can be significantly shortened.

Furthermore, when compressing data, it is easy to average the data of a plurality of pixels to create image data for display, so the quality of the image displayed on the monitor device is also improved.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an example of a layout scanner system for applying the method according to the present invention.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 In a layout scanner system that stores image data from multiple original images in a memory device and then displays images corresponding to the required image data on a monitor device to perform image aggregation, input The image data from the scanned original image is stored as it is in the memory device, and the compressed data for monitor display obtained by compressing the image data at an arbitrary ratio is also stored in the memory device or a separate memory device. A method for storing data in a memory device in a layout scanner system, characterized in that: