Patent ID: 8488896

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an image acquiring unit configured to acquire image data about an original image; an image processing unit configured to separate a background pixel from a foreground pixel in the original image, the image processing unit including, a first image segmenting unit configured to segment the original image into plural first image segments based on the image data, a second image segmenting unit configured to segment the original image into a foreground segment and a background segment based on image distance information about the image data, the second image segmenting unit configured to separate subjects for each distance by using one of an absolute distance and a relative distance between each subject and the image acquiring unit if image data in which the subject exists is acquired, and an image segmentation finalizing unit configured to finalize a foreground pixel region and a background pixel region in the original image based on whether the individual first image segments segmented by the first image segmenting unit belong to the foreground segment or the background segment segmented by the second image segmenting unit; an image filtering unit configured to filter the background pixel; and an image merging unit configured to merge the foreground pixel and the filtered background pixel to generate a new image having a blurred background, wherein the second image segmenting unit includes, an image distance information acquiring unit configured to segment the original image into plural second image segments, and configured to acquire image distance information about each of the second image segments; an image focus region information acquiring unit configured to acquire focus region information about a focus region in the original image; a foreground object frame-number-range finalizing unit configured to acquire information about the second image segment that enters the focus region based on the image distance information about each of the second image segments and the focus region information, and configured to finalize a frame number range of a foreground object based on the information about the second image segment that enters the focus region; and a separating unit configured to acquire the foreground segment and the background segment of the original image by separating the foreground object from a background object in the original image based on the image distance information about each of the second image segments and the frame number range of the foreground object.