Patent ID: 6667815
Filing Date: 2003-12-23
Classification: G06T,H04N

Abstract:
A method of processing a digital image for noise suppression and sharpness enhancement, comprising the steps of:performing a sharpness enhancing process on original image data of an original image to create sharpness enhanced image data in which an image and a noise included therein are both sharpened; performing a smoothing process on said original image data to create smoothed image data; subtracting the smoothed image data from said sharpness enhanced image data to create image data containing subject image edges and the noise of which the sharpness enhancement is achieved; performing an edge detection from said original image data to determine weighting data for an edge region and weighting data for a noise region used to discriminate the edge region of a subject and the noise region; multiplying said image data containing the subject image edges and the noise by said weighting data for the noise region to determine noise data of each color in the noise region; determining a black-and-white noise component and a color noise component from the noise data of said each color; multiplying the thus obtained black-and-white noise component and color noise component by their suppressing coefficients to determine a black-and-white noise suppressing component and a color noise suppressing component; and selectively removing said black-and-white noise suppressing component and said color noise suppressing component from said sharpness enhanced image data, thereby creating a processed image in which the noise suppression is achieved while retaining the sharpness enhancement in the edge region of the image.