Patent ID: 8134578

Claim:
A method for producing a hybrid importance map for a source image in a color management system, the method comprising: receiving, into a memory, a source image having a plurality of pixels; selecting a plurality of image operators for said image, each image operator being responsive to pixel changes based on content of said image; calculating, for each pixel in said image, pixel importance values using said selected image operators, said pixel importance values being determined by the image operator with respect to a set of neighbor pixels surrounding a current pixel; producing pixel importance maps based on said pixel importance values determined by said image operators; normalizing said pixel importance maps; weighting said pixel importance maps; combining said weighted pixel importance maps to generate a hybrid importance map for all of said image, where said hybrid importance map M(I) comprises: M ⁡ ( I ) = ∑ i = 1 n ⁢ ⁢ α i ⁢ m i ⁡ ( I ) , ⁢ ∑ i = 1 n ⁢ ⁢ α i = 1 , where n is the number of pixel importance maps, m i (I) is the i th pixel importance map generated by the i th operator for image I, and α i is the weighting factor assigned to the i th pixel importance map, and whereby different weighing factors α i are assigned to each of the pixel importance maps m i so that the sum of each weighting factor α i over n pixels is equal to one; resizing said source image by selectively retaining image pixels based on said hybrid importance map; and outputting said resized image to an output device.