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:
Jul. 27, 1999
Filed:
Jan. 24, 1997
Toshiyuki Hattori, Nagano, JP;
Seiko Epson Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An image processing system and method for laser-printing a composite image containing a monotone image and a multi gradation-level image in a superposed fashion such that the contours of characters in the monotone image are well smoothed without degrading the multi gradation-level image. The multi gradation-level image remains a faithful reproduction of the original and the resultant composite image is improved. When receiving a composite image 2, an image processing system binarize the pixel values of the composite image 2, to reproduce a mono-tone image 8. At the same time, the system generates a multi gradation-level, N-fold density image 10 from the composite image 2. The mono-tone image 8 is subjected to a smoothing process to smooth the contours of characters. The pixels corresponding to a corrected pixel area 17 in the mono-tone image 8 of the N-fold density image 10 are converted into white pixels by masking the corrected pixel area. Thereafter, the smoothed monotone image 16 and the N-fold density image 18 are superposed one on the other, to thereby form a final image 22.