Patent Document ID: 8212897
Application ID: 12724391
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A portable digital image acquisition apparatus having no photographic film (hereinafter “portable apparatus”), the portable apparatus comprising a housing that contains an image sensor and a lens for capturing digital images and a flash unit coupled with the housing for providing illumination during image capture, the portable apparatus including a portrait mode for generating in-camera an image of a foreground object against a blurred background, the portable apparatus also including a face detector arranged to detect one or more faces in one or more of a series of digital images being captured and if so to switch to portrait mode, the portrait mode being operable to capture first, second and third images of nominally the same scene, not necessarily in the order stated, at least one of the first and second images being taken with flash, and the third image being blurred compared to the first and second images, the portrait mode further being operable to determine foreground and background regions of the scene using the first and second images, and to substitute the blurred background of the third image for the background of an in focus image of the scene, thereby generating in-camera a digital image of an in-focus foreground object against a blurred background, wherein the in-focus image comprises one of the first and second images, wherein the first and second images have different pixel resolutions with the in-focus image having the higher resolution, and the apparatus is further configured to determine the foreground and background regions including matching pixel resolutions of the first and second images by at least one of up-sampling the image of lower resolution and sub-sampling the image of higher resolution.