Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Toru Adachi

Hiroshi Tanaka

Tokiyuki Okano

Yoshiyuki Nakai

Kenji Matsumoto

Kohsuke Harada

Masanori Toyoda

Keiji Nakamura

The object of the present invention is to use the same FIFO line memory for both enlargement and reduction during variable-magnification processing in the scan direction, allowing reduction in circuit board area, reduction in power consumption, and reduction in cost, and to provide an image processing apparatus that allows variable-magnification processing to be carried out such that the speed of a scanning unit that captures image data during variable-magnification processing in the cross-scan direction is constant. During processing to enlarge an image in the scan direction, image data travels from CCD circuit board, passing through gate b of selector, is written to and read from FIFO memory, and from gate b of selector is written to memory provided at variable magnification unit. At variable magnification unit, image data is read from memory a plurality of times in correspondence to enlargement ratio, changing the magnification of the image data. Furthermore, image data is output through gate a of selector to LSU unit. During processing to reduce an image, image data travels from CCD circuit board, passing through gate a of selector, is input to variable magnification unit where it is subjected to variable-magnification processing, passes through gate a of selector, is written to and read from FIFO memory, passes through gate b of selector, and is output to LSU unit.

Image processing apparatus

The data of the partial images of an original output from an original input scanning device is converted by an image reducing section into reduced images of data in accordance with the size of duplication. Each reduced image of data is stored in a data storage. A pattern matching section compares adjoining reduced partial images of data as to the overlapping image data, to check the congruency therebetween. Based on this judgement result, an address setting section generates a joining position address corresponding to the joining position in each storage area. A data output control section loads the adjoining reduced partial images of data stored in respective storage areas, in a sequentially, joinable manner, so that an image forming section forms a duplicated image of the original on a predetermined recording medium in accordance with the reduced image data.

Image forming method and an image forming apparatus therefor

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Yamatokoriyama, Japan

Toru Adachi