Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Canon Information Systems Research Australia Pty. Ltd.

Michael Jan Lawther

Julie Rae Kowald

Stephen Edward Ecob

James Philip Andrew

James Austin Besley

Yu-Ling Chen

John Charles Brook

James Robert Metcalfe

Eric Wai-Shing Chong

Steven Richard Irrgang

Timothy John Wark

Lena Qian

Andrew James Lo

Scott Bradley

Choi Chi Evelene Ma

Rupert William Galloway Reeve

Timothy Mark Morris-Yates

Julian Frank Andrew Magarey

Lachlan James Patrick

Christopher Mark Paola

Kevin Mun Choong Tham

John Anthony Brett

Colin Eric Druitt

Christopher James Cormie

A method of providing a print representation of a document which, when printed, has at least one region the appearance of which is dependent on viewing conditions. The method comprises generating a representation of the document and then modifying the appearance of the at least one region to thereby simulate the appearance of the document when printed. This is achieved by animating the representation of the at least one region or at least partially combining the at least one region with an image.

Print presentation

A method (), an apparatus, and a computer program product for automatically producing a compact representation of a colour document are disclosed. In the method, a digital image of a colour-document page is segmented () into connected components in one-pass, block raster order. The digital image of the page is partitioned into foreground and background images using layout analysis () based on compact, connected-component statistics of the whole page. At least one portion of the background image where at least one portion of the foreground image obscures the background image is inpainting () in one-pass block raster order. The foreground and background images are combined () to form a compact document. A method, an apparatus, and a computer program product for segmenting a digital image comprising a plurality of pixels are also disclosed.

Segmenting digital image and producing compact representation

A method of animating a sprite in a video production comprising a plurality of sequential video frames is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of selecting () a feature, with which the sprite is to be juxtaposed, in one of said video frames, applying () a feature tracking process to the video production to thereby output (), for a series of said plurality of video frames containing the feature, a temporal-spatial record for the feature across the plurality of video frames, and compositing (), with the series of said plurality of video frames, a corresponding series of instantiations of the sprite dependent upon the temporal-spatial record.

Interactive animation of sprites in a video production

Disclosed is an imaging engine system () generally intended for the reproduction of graphical object images using apparatus having limited computing resources, such as so-called 'thin clients'. Numerous developments of traditional image processing and rendering enable high quality image generation. One such development takes advantage of temporal coherence between one frame in an animation sequence and the succeeding frame. In particular, there will often be some edges () of graphical objects that remain 'static' across several contiguous frames. One example of this includes those edges used to draw image background detail. Another development performs antialiasing during scan line rendering of a graphic object image where sub-pixel resolution coverage bit-masks (A-buffers-) are generated for a limited number of scan lines at a time. Preferably the A-buffers are generated for only one pixel at a time. Another development relates to rendering a scan line of a graphic object image in a scan line renderer for a span of pixels lying between two x-order consecutive edges intersecting the scan line. For the span of pixels, this development maintains a subset of depths present in the rendering, the subset being those depths that are present on the span and being maintained in depth order () and subject to removal of depths where the corresponding depth is no longer active. In another development a compositing stack (-) of image layers to be rendered in a raster scan fashion is simplified. Rendering is operable over a run of two or more pixels within which a relationship between graphical objects contributing to the layers does not change. The layers are first divided into groups (), with each group being separated by a layer having variable transparency (). For a top one of the groups, layers having constant color in the run are reduced to a single equivalent color () having an associated accumulated contribution. Many other developments are disclosed.

Optimising compositing calculations for a run of pixels

Compositing with a sub-pixel mask in graphic object rendering

Growing community of inventors

Eastwood, Australia

Michael Jan Lawther