Patent ID: 7020352

Claim:
A method for extracting individual images from a medium containing one or more areas, comprising the steps of: (a) scanning the medium at a relatively low resolution to generate a low-resolution digital representation of the medium and the individual images thereon; (b) processing the low-resolution digital representation by performing the following operations without user intervention: (b)(1) defining borders of the medium, such that all of the individual images are within the defined borders; (b)(2) applying a smoothen filter to the low-resolution representation; (b)(3) detecting edges of each area containing at least one image; (b)(4) determining, and if necessary correcting, the orientation of the medium; and (b)(5) locating each of the individual images within its corresponding area in the medium; (c) generating an index of all individual images identified on the medium; (d) selecting one or more of the individual images from the index; and (e) re-scanning only the selected individual images within the medium at a relatively high resolution; wherein the low-resolution digital representation is an RGB color representation, and wherein step (b)(2) comprises applying the smoothen filter to only the R data of each pixel in the low-resolution representation.