Patent ID: 7170524

Claim:
A line drawing image generating device for generating line drawing data based on original image data, comprising: a mechanism for detecting an area whose brightness is smaller than a predetermined value in an original image, as an ink line area, and generating ink line image data representing the ink line area; a mechanism for consecutively selecting each pixel of entire original image data as a pixel to be processed; a first determination mechanism for determining whether or not the pixel to be processed is included in the ink line area with reference to the ink line image data; a second determination mechanism for determining whether or not the pixel to be processed is in a vicinity of the ink line area with reference to the ink line image data; a third determination mechanism for determining whether or not the pixel to be processed is included in an outline by applying an outline extraction process to the pixel to be processed based on the original image data when the first determination mechanism determines that the pixel to be processed is included in the ink line area and the second determination mechanism determines that the pixel to be processed is in the vicinity of the ink line area; and a mechanism for assigning, to a first color, pixels which are determined as being included in the ink line area by the first determination mechanism, and pixels which are determined as being included in the outline by the third determination mechanism, and assigning, to a second color other than the first color, pixels which are also determined as being in the vicinity of the ink line area by the second determination mechanism, and pixels which are determined as being not included in the outline by the third determination mechanism, thereby generating line drawing data while preventing the ink line area from becoming thickened.