Patent ID: 6956584

Claim:
An image processing method comprising: a step inputting an input graphic path indicating a shape of a graphic to be plotted, and an input clip path indicating a shape of a plot effective range, each path being represented by a vector set of a plurality of straight lines connected at end points such that one path is formed by connecting a starting point of a first straight line and a terminating point of a last straight line to describe an arbitrary polygonal closed region; a scan line conversion step converting line vectors of the input graphic path and the input clip path into run sets in dot coordinates passed by the line vectors, and generating a region run describing a closed region represented by the entire path from the run sets, so as to obtain a graphic region run for the graphic path and a clip region run for the clip path; and a clipping step extracting an overlapping portion of the graphic region run and the clip region run, and generating a plot region run for a plot path, said scan line conversion step and said clipping step carrying out a rasterizing process.