Patent ID: 7046387

Claim:
A device for processing images, comprising: a compressing/coding unit configured to encode image data including a plurality of color components to produce encoded image data; a memory unit configured to store the encoded image data produced by said compressing/coding unit, the memory unit having at least one memory space assigned to a part of the encoded image data, wherein the part of the encoded image data represents the plurality of color components; a distribution-measurement unit configured to measure a distribution of the plurality of color components by counting, with respect to each of a plurality of areas into which a color space is divided, a number of pixels of the encoded image data whose color components belong to a given area; and a memory-control unit configured to release the at least one memory space assigned to the part of the encoded image data and to record data indicative of one of the areas on which the distribution concentrates in said memory unit in response to a detection by said distribution-measurement unit that the distribution concentrates on said one of the areas.