Automatic high-luminance compression method and circuit adopting the same

Abstract

An automatic high-luminance compression circuit for compressing input luminance information for a high-luminance expression of an image includes an input end for receiving n-bit input luminance information, a controller for receiving (n-k)-bit input luminance information comprised of (n-k) bits starting from the most significant bit (MSB) among the n-bit input luminance information received via the input end, and generating a region select signal for selecting a sub-region for enhancing a luminance expression degree among sub-regions according to a distribution result of (n-k)-bit input luminance information with respect to the sub-regions which exist in a high-luminance region and are discriminated with each other according to a value of the (n-k)-bit input luminance information, a corrector for correcting k-bit input luminance information compressed of k bits starting from the least significant bit (LSB) in the n-bit input luminance information received via the input end, so that the sub-region selected in the region select signal occupies a wide range in the high-luminance region and at least one sub-region occupies a narrow range therein, in order to output the n-bit input information, and a high-luminance compression processor for compressing the corrected n-bit input luminance information output from the corrector according to the stored high-luminance compression characteristic. Capacity of a memory for storing respectively different high-luminance compression characteristics adapted for a high-luminance distribution can be reduced and a high-luminance compression operation can be performed using a compression characteristic adapted for the high-luminance distribution of a video signal.