Patent ID: 7113634

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: image acquiring means for acquiring an image of a subject as a subject image; parallax map acquiring means for acquiring a parallax map corresponding to the subject image acquired by said image acquiring means and representing a depth distribution of the subject; image processing means for synthesizing a three-dimensional image such that pixels of same coordinates in respective images of a multiple viewpoint image sequence of the subject viewed from a plurality of viewpoints are arranged as adjacent pixels in accordance with an arrangement of the viewpoints of the images based on the subject image acquired by said image acquiring means and the parallax map acquired by said parallax map acquiring means; output means for outputting the three-dimensional image synthesized by said image processing means; and an optical member having a cyclic structure superposed on the three-dimensional image outputted from said output means; wherein said image processing means comprises: first means for finding viewpoint positions and pixel positions to which the multiple viewpoint image sequence belongs with respect to respective pixels of the three-dimensional image to be synthesized; second means for finding a parallax deviation from the parallax map acquired by said parallax map acquiring means based on the viewpoint positions and the pixel positions acquired by said first means; third means for finding pixels values of the subject image corresponding to the respective pixels of the three-dimensional image according to the parallax deviation acquired by said second means; fourth means for writing the pixel values of the subject image acquired by said third means into the respective pixels of the three-dimensional image; and wherein said second means comprises: fifth means for finding a first parallax deviation from parallaxes in the parallax map at the pixel positions of the subject image corresponding to the respective pixels of the three-dimensional image by using the viewpoint positions and the pixel positions found by said first means; and sixth means for finding a second parallax deviation from the parallax map acquired by said parallax map acquiring means by using the viewpoint positions and the pixel positions found by said first means, and then correcting the second parallax deviation based on the first parallax deviation.