Patent ID: 6023524
Filing Date: 2000-02-08
Classification: G03B,G06K,H04N

Abstract:
A method for determining an amount of exposure comprising the steps of:reading photographing information which indicates photographing conditions, the photographing information including positional information of a human image on a color original image, strobe information which indicates whether strobe light is on or off, and luminance information which indicates an average luminance of a subject including the human image prior to emission of the strobe light;obtaining a size of the human image, which indicates at least one of a length in a vertical or transverse direction, an area, and an aspect ratio of the human image, on the basis of the photographing information;dividing the color original image into a large number of pixels, separating each of the pixels into three colors of red light, green light and blue light, and photometrically measuring the red light, green light and blue light;determining, on the basis of data obtained by photometry, densities of the three colors of red, green and blue of each of the pixels, and dividing the color original image into small regions formed from continuous pixels in which at least one of colors obtained from the densities of the three colors and densities are the same or are similar;determining, on the basis of the positional information included in the photographing information, a predetermined region on the color original image in which the human image is not included;selecting, as an effective region, a region including a small region which is of the same size as the human image or is greater than the size of the human image and excluding a small region of which at least one portion is included in the predetermined region;by using densities of all pixels in the selected effective region, determining a density histogram, determining a characteristic range on the histogram on the basis of the strobe information and the luminance information which are included in the photographing information, and estimating a density of the human image on the basis of the densities of all pixels included in the characteristic range; anddetermining, on the basis of the estimated density, an amount of exposure for a copy media.