Patent ID: 7965776

Claim:
A picture processing and displaying apparatus for compressing, decompressing, and editing a picture, the apparatus comprising: a compressed data buffer to store compressed data; a reference image buffer to store parameters used in decompressing data; an image compressor that divides a given source picture into a plurality of unit images each being a two-dimensional block of pixels, produces compressed data of the source picture by calculating reference data representing an average level of the two-dimensional block of pixels of each individual unit image and converting the reference data of at least one unit image to another value determined from comparison between that reference data and prescribed data in another unit image, and stores the resulting compressed data in the compressed data buffer; a reference parameter generator that receives, from the image compressor, original reference data corresponding to each and every unit image having undergone the reference data conversion and stores the received reference data in the reference image buffer, together with information that associates the stored reference data with the unit images corresponding thereto, in parallel with the storing of the compressed data in the compressed data buffer; an image decompressor that retrieves a plurality of compressed unit images from the compressed data buffer in an order determined according to a specified image editing operation, retrieves original reference data corresponding to each retrieved unit image from the reference image buffer, and decompresses the retrieved compressed unit images by using the retrieved reference data; and an image processor that edits and outputs the unit images decompressed by the image decompressor, according to the specified image editing operation.