Patent ID: 8363292

Claim:
A conversion table compression method of compressing a conversion table and storing the conversion table in a storage medium, comprising: an axial difference creating step of creating an axial difference table which defines axial difference values corresponding to grid points of an input space of the conversion table, respectively, from data stored in the conversion table, wherein each axial difference value corresponding to a grid point is given by: for each grid point of the conversion table, calculating a first difference value between a value of the grid point and a value of a first next grid point adjacent to the grid point in a first direction of a first predetermined coordinate axis of the input space of the conversion table and then substituting the value of the grid point with the calculated first difference value, and for each of the grid points, whose values have been substituted with the respective first difference value, calculating a second difference value between the first difference value of the grid point and a first difference value of a second next grid point adjacent to the grid point in a second direction of a second coordinate axis other than the first direction of the first predetermined coordinate axis of the input space of the conversion table and then substituting the first difference value of the grid point with the calculated second difference value; a compressing step of compressing the axial difference table to create compressed data; and a storing step of storing the compressed data in a recording medium.