Patent ID: 8670145
Filing Date: 2014-03-11
Classification: G06F,H04N

Abstract:
1. An image processing system, comprising: a first apparatus provided on a network that generates a user request including (i) image processing information indicating image processing to be applied to image data to generate processed data, and (ii) device-specific information indicating an image forming apparatus to form an image of the processed data; a service providing apparatus provided on the network, the service providing apparatus including one or more image processing apparatuses each providing one or more image processing functions; and an image processing management apparatus provided on the network and disposed to communicate through the network with the first apparatus, the image forming apparatus, and the service providing apparatus, the image processing management apparatus including: a memory that stores device information of the image forming apparatus and device information of the service providing apparatus, the device information of the image forming apparatus including device-specific information of the image forming apparatus and image processing function information indicating one or more image processing functions that can be provided by the image forming apparatus, the device information of the service providing apparatus including, for each one of the one or more image processing apparatuses of the service providing apparatus, device-specific information that specifies an image processing apparatus and image processing function information indicating one or more image processing functions that can be provided by the image processing apparatus; a session manager that receives the user request from the first apparatus via the network; and a service manager that refers to the device information of the image forming apparatus to extract the image processing function information of the image forming apparatus using the device-specific information of the user request, and determines whether the image forming apparatus indicated by the device-specific information of the user request is capable of applying the image processing specified by the image processing information of the user request by referring to the extracted image processing function information to generate a first service determination result, wherein in a case that the first service determination result indicates that the image forming apparatus is capable of applying the image processing specified by the image processing information of the user request, the service manager generates an image processing instruction and sends the image processing instruction to the image forming apparatus via the session manager to cause the image forming apparatus to apply the image processing specified by the image processing information of the user request to generate the processed data, and in a case that the first service determination result indicates that the image forming apparatus is not capable of applying the image processing specified by the image processing information of the user request, the service manager searches the device information of the service providing apparatus to extract device-specific information that is stored in association with image processing function information indicating the image specified by the image information of the user request, specifies at least one image processing apparatus of the service providing apparatus that is capable of applying the image specified by the image information of the user request using the extracted device-specific information, and sends the at least one image processing apparatus of the service providing apparatus an image processing instruction to cause the at least one image processing apparatus to apply the image processing specified by the image processing information of the user request to generate the processed data and send the processed data to the session manager, and the session manager sends the received processed data together with an instruction to print the process data to the image forming apparatus indicated by the device-specific information of the user request.