The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 04, 1999
Filed:
Sep. 30, 1996
Giordano B Beretta, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
In the present invention statistical methods are used to estimate the reflectance of the paper and align the tone gamut to the dynamic range of a digital input device such as a scanner during a single scan. The estimate is refined during the scan. This refinement increases the robustness with respect to unfavorable originals (e.g., originals with a dark border) and at the same time also can take into account such phenomena as the change of the response of the sensor due to thermal effect during slow scans. In the present invention no spatial information on the image is collected. Instead a histogram of the occurrence of each tone level is accumulated during the scan. The background color of the image, i.e., the tone value of the paper is estimated by analyzing the histogram. When this value is known, the parameters for a tone reproduction curve (TRC) can be calculated. The shape of the TRC is not altered by these parameters, i.e., the exposure can be controlled independently of the tone reproduction. This process is repeated from time to time during the scan to assure robustness and to compensate for drifts in the sensitivity of the sensor.