Patent ID: 7630544

Claim:
A method of locating a character set in a digital image comprising: using a processing unit to perform the following steps: examining pixels of said digital image to detect pixels having specified color attributes; identifying regions of said detected pixels; clustering said identified regions according to color similarity; and examining each cluster to detect the cluster meeting specified morphological constraints thereby to locate said character set; wherein during pixel examining, the pixels are examined to determine if the pixels meet at least one of specified red, green, blue (RGB) color properties and specified hue, saturation and luminance (HSL) properties; and wherein detected pixels having said specific color attributes are those having red, green and blue channel values outside of the following constraints: red<80; green>180 and red<100; blue>180 and red<100; red>100 and green>100 and blue<80; red>180 and green>180 and blue>180; green>(red+50) and red>100; blue>(red+50) and red>100; green<(red+15) and red<100; blue>(red+15) and red<100; |red-green|<30 and |red-blue|<30 and |green-blue|<30; where each of red, green, and blue is from 0 to 255.