Patent ID: 9251448
Filing Date: 2016-02-02
CPC Classification: G06K

Claim Text:
1. An image processing apparatus including an expansion memory for storing data to be expanded and output to a print engine for executing print processing, the image processing apparatus comprising: an interpreter processing part for creating intermediate data based on job data that is a print target, the job data being described in a page description language; a rasterize processing part for creating RIP (Raster Image Processor) image data with respect to each band for dividing each page into a plurality of parts, based on the intermediate data created by the interpreter processing part; an image storage part for temporarily storing RIP image data created by the rasterize processing part; a characteristic value calculating part for calculating a characteristic value which can uniquely distinguish the RIP image data and associating the calculated characteristic value with the corresponding RIP image data; an expansion processing part for expanding RIP image data stored in the image storage part and storing the expanded RIP image data in the expansion memory; and a cache for temporarily holding, together with the corresponding characteristic value, RIP image data which has not been expanded by the expansion processing part and which corresponds to RIP image data which has already been expanded and stored in the expansion memory, wherein, the expansion processing part compares a characteristic value of target RIP image data that is stored in the image storage part and that is a target to be stored in the expansion memory with a characteristic value of RIP image data stored in the cache before accessing the image storage part, and when the characteristic values agree, reads out and expands the RIP image data stored in the cache whose characteristic value agrees with the characteristic value of the target RIP image data stored in the image storage part, to store the expanded RIP image data in the expansion memory.