Patent ID: 6266156
Filing Date: 2001-07-24
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
An area judging apparatus for judging multiple areas including character portions, photograph portions and dot portions, comprising:binarizing means which designates a block of a predetermined number of pixels centering around target pixels among the image data as a mask, and compares the pixels in said mask with a threshold to binarize it into binary values;linkage degree-calculating means for calculating the linkage degree indicating the linking conditions of black pixels, based on the number of black pixels for each line in each direction in said binarizing mask;density parameter-calculating means for calculating the density parameter from the density of the black pixels in said binarizing mask; andarea judging means for designating said linkage degree and said density parameter as the characteristic value, and judging an area of said target pixels based on the characteristic value;wherein said linkage degree-calculating means counts the number of black pixels in each line in the main scanning direction as a first value and in the sub scanning direction as a second value from the results of binarization in said mask, and designates the larger of said first and second values as the linkage degree.