Patent ID: 7616240

Claim:
An image processing method for processing electronic data of an input image, comprising: a signal separation step of separating the electronic data into a brightness component and a color difference component; an edge amount calculation step of calculating the brightness component edge amount and the color difference component edge amount for each of the brightness component and the color difference component provided at said signal separation step; a maximum edge amount selection step of selecting the maximum edge amount from among the brightness component and the color difference component calculated at said edge amount calculation step; an edge information calculation step of calculating edge information of the component corresponding to the maximum edge amount based on the maximum edge amount selected at said maximum edge amount selection step; and an electronic data processing step of processing the electronic data based on filter information that has an elliptical shape, the filter information based on the edge information calculated at said edge information calculation step; wherein the major axis of the elliptical shape is based upon the edge of the electronic data indicated by said edge information calculation step.