Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Matsushita Wlectric Ind.

Mika Matsui

Yoshiyuki Miyabe

Taketo Yoshii

Katsuyuki Morita

Masaru Nakai

A gray scaled data generation device which generates characters and figures of a size which is a fixed number of pixels as gray scaled data, based on outline data which includes outline information which expresses outlines of strokes included in characters and figures and stroke information which shows positions of horizontal and vertical strokes, wherein the gray scaled data generation device has optimizing means for optimizing a position of a stroke, said position being in a coordinate system in which the position is expressed in terms of fine pixels given by dividing every pixel of said size in both a horizontal and a vertical direction, by moving a position of every stroke expressed in the stroke information to a position which satisfies certain criteria related to distances from a border of each pixel; outline generation means for generating outlines in said coordinate system from the outline information, for each stroke which has had its position optimized; and gray scaled data generation means for generating gray scaled data for each pixel unit based on the generated outlines.

Gray scaled data generating device which balances width and shade of

The present invention enables application of the bold process to thicken the data or the outline process to hollow the inside of the data to leave the contour thereof to the gray scale data representing the gray scale font data or image data. Using the gray scale modified data as a result of modification process can make sentences visually appealing. The gray scale modified data comprises an area judging means, a background color area processing means, and a non-background color area processing means. The area judging means judges whether each pixel on the gray scale data to be processed has the background color level. The background color area processing means sets a value calculated by the values of the neighboring pixels of each pixel on the background color area to the value of the mapping pixel on the modified data. The non-background color area processing means sets a value calculated by a certain process for each pixel on the non-background color area to the value of the mapping pixel on the modified data.

Method and system for adding effects to gray scale images

A bit map pattern generation apparatus can generate an outline of a character with embedded patterns in the form of a bar code. A printer can print the character images pursuant to the generated bit map pattern. The patterns can provide a verification of the authenticity of the characters on a document.

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Hirakata, Japan

Mika Matsui