Patent ID: 6549295
Filing Date: 2003-04-15
Classification: G02B,G03B,H04N

Abstract:
A photographic kiosk for making a composite image from which special imaging effects are derived, said kiosk comprising:means for acquiring a plurality of input image signals each representing original images and formatted as a plurality of image data points corresponding, respectively, to the individual pixels of an image; and programmable means for: (a) determining the total number of original images to reside in the composite image; (b) selecting an interval corresponding to the spatial frequency of a lenticular array to be used for viewing the composite image; (c) multiplying the spatial frequency of the lenticular array by the total number of images to reside in the composite image and determining the minimum output pixel resolution for the composite image as an integer value of the product of the number of images and the spatial frequency to arrive at the output pixel resolution in pixels per inch; (d) selecting the physical size of the area over which the composite image is to be reproduced in hardcopy form; calculating the total number of pixels allowed in the physical size; (e) continuously sampling the original images over one of the physical lengths corresponding to the composite image at a sampling rate corresponding to the number of pixels allowed in composite divided by the total number of original images to be combined; (f) dividing up the data for each image into consecutive sets of pixel data points (A1, A2, A3, . . . , An; B1, B2, B3, . . . ; Bn) corresponding to the total number of intervals that will fit into the physical size of the composite image; and (g) arranging the sets imagewise in alternating consecutive sequences (A1, B1, C1; . . . ; A2, B2, C2, . . . , etc) to obtain the composite image.