Patent ID: 6947592

Claim:
A color image encoding method which inputs and encodes color image data, comprising the steps of: dividing the input color image data into a plurality of blocks; scanning and maintaining the color image data to be encoded; run-length modeling when a pixel of a specified position is the same color as the previous pixel and is different from a pixel of one line before; forming, when the pixel of the specified position is a different color from the previous pixel, a copy mode which compares the pixel of the one line before to the pixel of the specified position and copies the pixel of the one line before in the case of the same color; taking the number of continuous pixels for which the color is the same as the pixel of one line before as a number of copies; and encoding of the copy mode and the value of the number of copies along with the other color indexes which were run-length modeled and the normal value of the run.