JP2006171976A - Print processing method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To use a plurality of image data in one page and finish it like an electronic album. When printing such page data, one image may span a plurality of bands depending on the size and position of the image arranged in the page. In such a situation, a period during which rasterization processing of a plurality of bands is performed, a relatively long occupation of the memory area, or redundant image loading processing occurs. As a result, there is a problem that processing takes time and other processing cannot be performed on the host computer.
In order to solve the above-described problems, the present invention provides divided area changing means for changing divided areas, image area detecting means in print data, and image attribute acquiring means for acquiring attributes of an image to be printed. The divided area is changed based on the image area and the image attribute acquired by the image area detecting means and the image attribute acquiring means.
[Selection] Figure 1

Description

  The present invention relates to a printing system that generates print data on a host computer and performs printing.

  2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, DTP application software that prints out images, characters, graphic objects, and the like has been used in so-called page printers such as laser beam printers and inkjet printers. The following two methods are generally used for the process in which the application sends print data from the host computer to the printer. In other words, a high-level drawing command represented by a page description language is sent to the printer, and image, character, and graphic object rasterization processing (rasterization) is performed on the printer side, and rasterization processing is performed on the host computer. In this method, the processed image data is sent to a printer. The former method is generally widely used because it requires a small amount of processing on the host computer and also requires less time from issuing a print instruction to releasing the resources on the computer. On the other hand, the processing capacity of home-use computers has dramatically improved due to the recent reduction in computer resources such as random access memory, and the rasterization method on the host computer due to the complexity of page data. It is often used. In addition, since rasterizing the entire full-color page data at once requires a huge amount of memory, both methods generally perform so-called banding that divides the page area into multiple areas and sequentially rasterizes them. It is.

With respect to the banding processing, conventionally, a method has been proposed in which the bandwidth is a predetermined value or is dynamically changed according to the drawing content to perform rasterization processing (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-240073

  In general DTP application programs and digital photo album software, there is a usage method in which a plurality of image data is arranged in one page and finished like an electronic album. When printing such page data, one image may span a plurality of bands depending on the size and position of the image arranged in the page. In the above background art, in such a situation, during the period when rasterization processing of a plurality of bands is performed, the corresponding image is kept on the memory, or the image data is loaded onto the memory a plurality of times for each band rasterization processing, etc. However, the memory area has been occupied for a relatively long period of time, or redundant image loading processing has occurred. As a result, there are problems that it takes time for processing and that other processing cannot be performed on the host computer.

  In order to solve the above-described problems, the present invention provides a processing method for dividing print data into a plurality of regions and developing the divided data, divided region changing means for changing the divided regions, image region detecting means in the print data, and printing Image attribute acquisition means for acquiring the attribute of the target image, and changes the divided area based on the image area acquired by the image area detection means and the image attribute acquisition means, and the image attribute.

  According to the present invention, in a processing method for dividing print data into a plurality of regions and developing the print data, an effect of reducing the total memory amount and processing time allocated to the print processing on the host computer is obtained.

  Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a system constituting the present invention.

  In FIG. 1, 101 is a host computer, 102 is a central processing unit (CPU), 103 is a system bus, 104 is a main storage (RAM), 105 is an auxiliary storage (HD), and 106 is A peripheral device control device 107 is a color printing device.

  In the host computer 101, the CPU 102, RAM 104, HD 105, and peripheral device control device 106 are each connected via an internal bus represented by the system bus 103. The host computer 101 and the color printing apparatus 106 are connected by wired or wireless connection such as an IEEE 1394 cable.

  In addition, each of the components may be connected via various networks such as a local area network.

  The color printing apparatus 107 (hereinafter also simply referred to as a printer) is not limited in its recording method, such as a laser beam printer or an ink jet printer. In this embodiment, a color output printing apparatus is taken as an example. However, even a monochrome printer is applicable to the present invention. The host computer 101 includes an input device represented by a keyboard (not shown) and an output device represented by a CRT.

  First, the operator instructs the CPU 102 to start the DTP application program stored in the HD 105 via the input device. The CPU 102 loads the program execution code from the HD 105 onto the RAM 104 and displays an initial screen on the output device.

  The operator arranges graphic objects such as images and characters on the page area by a general operation in a so-called DTP application not described in detail on the application program. Here, it is assumed that data in which two images are arranged on a page of A4 size (210 mm × 297 mm) is created.

  FIG. 2 shows a page image of the created data.

  In FIG. 2, 201 is a page area, 202 is a first image area, and 203 is a second image area.

  The first image area and the second image area have the same vertical and horizontal sizes, but are different in arrangement position. It is assumed that different input images are displayed in this image area. In this embodiment, they are referred to as image 1 and image 2 for convenience.

  Image 1 and image 2 can be of any format and size, but here they are images taken with a digital camera, both of which are uncompressed TIFF formats, and the size is the result of taking image 1 in the low image quality mode. It is assumed that the image is 512 × 768 (pixel) and the image 2 is 2048 × 3072 (pixel), which is a photographing result in the high image quality mode. These attributes are shown in Table 1.

  After realizing the desired arrangement, the operator issues a print instruction.

  The application program receives a print instruction and starts print processing. FIG. 3 shows the processing steps of the program after the printing instruction is issued.

  Hereinafter, FIG. 3 will be described.

  The program that has received the print instruction acquires the resolution of the output destination printer in step S301. In step S302, a memory image size necessary for rasterizing the entire page data is determined from the acquired resolution and page size, and a memory capacity is calculated. In this embodiment, it is assumed that 300 dpi is obtained in step S301. Although the format of the memory image depends on the implementation, in this embodiment, each RGB color is 8 bits, and a storage area of 3 bytes per pixel is required. The storage capacity required for the entire page can be obtained from the following formula.

210 × 297 (mm) = 8.2677 × 11.6929 (inch) = 2480 × 3508 (dot) = 8699840
8699840 ^* 3 (bytes) = 24.89 (MB)
That is, a memory area of approximately 25 MB is required.

  In step S303, a band division position having a predetermined size is calculated. Here, the upper limit (default value) of the band memory size is 7 MB, and the page area is equally divided in the horizontal direction. The division image here is shown in FIG.

In FIG. 4, 401 is a page area, 402 is a first image area, 403 is a second image area, 404 is a first dividing line, 405 is a second dividing line, and 406 is a third dividing line. .
Since the division here is performed so that the respective band sizes are equal, the Y coordinate of the first dividing line 404 when the upper end of the page is zero is 877 (dot), and the Y of the second dividing line 405 is Y. The coordinate is 1754 (dot), the Y coordinate of the third dividing line 406 is 2631 (dot), and the memory size of each band image is
2480 × 877 × 3 = 6.22 (MB)
It becomes.

  The present invention does not limit the dividing method of the banding process. For example, the band dividing direction may be divided into strips in the vertical direction, or may be divided into tiles in the vertical and horizontal directions.

  In step S304, the image area edge in the page is detected and stored in the image area edge table secured on the RAM. The storage results here are shown in Table 2.

  Subsequently, in step S305, the division target image priority order is determined and stored in the division target image priority order table secured on the RAM.

  Here, FIG. 5 shows the division target image priority order determination step. This processing is performed for each image arranged in the page area, and processing load parameters are calculated and compared from various attributes of the image. The table illustrates load attributes corresponding to image attributes.

  This table is only an example. For example, in a system in which only a specific type of image is decoded by hardware, the load parameter corresponding to that type is set to a smaller value than that of other types. It is.

  First, an image format is detected in step S501. In step S502, the header portion is read, and in step S503, various attributes are read from the header information. Finally, in step S504, the load parameter of the image of interest is determined.

  In this embodiment, 2 is obtained for the input image 1 and 18 is obtained for the input image 2 (from Tables 2 and 3). In other words, the input image 1 having a lower processing load as a division target has a higher priority than the input image 2.

  Returning to step S306 in FIG. 3 again, the divided area changing process is performed here. Here, when the predetermined dividing line determined in step S303 divides the image area, it is checked whether the dividing line may be in contact with the edge of the image area when the dividing line is moved back and forth within the predetermined range.

  When touching the edge of the image area, it is determined whether or not the band memory size is within the predetermined size when it is actually moved. The size to be compared here can be arbitrarily determined, but in this embodiment, the upper limit is set to 7 MB as in the case of determining a predetermined dividing line.

  As a result of the processing here, (a) and (b) in FIG. 6 are considered as divided images after the dividing line is moved. Note that the case of FIG. 6C is not considered because the size of the second band is too large.

  In FIG. 6, 601 is a page area, 602 is a first image area, 603 is a second image area, 604 is a first dividing line, 605 is a second dividing line, and 606 is a third dividing line. .

  Corresponding elements in (a), (b), and (c) of FIG.

  Here, FIG. 6A divides the input image 1 and FIG. 6B divides the input image 2, and the input image 1 having the higher priority order of the divided images obtained in step S 305 is divided. The division method 6 (a) is finally adopted.

  In step S307, each band is rasterized by the determined dividing line, and sequentially transmitted to the printer, thereby completing the printing process.

Example configuration diagram Example print data page image Printing process steps in the embodiment Default page split image in the embodiment Image processing load parameter determination step in the embodiment Page division image after change in the embodiment

Explanation of symbols

101 Host computer 102 Central processing unit (CPU)
103 System bus 104 Main memory (RAM)
105 Auxiliary storage device (HD)
106 Peripheral device control device 107 Color printing device 201 Page region 202 First image region 203 Second image region 401 Page region 402 First image region 403 Second image region 404 First dividing line 405 Second division Line 406 Third dividing line 601 Page area 602 First image area 603 Second image area 604 First dividing line 605 Second dividing line 606 Third dividing line

Claims (1)

A processing method in which print data is divided into a plurality of areas and expanded.
A divided region changing unit for changing the divided region, an image region detecting unit in the print data, an image attribute acquiring unit for acquiring an attribute of the image to be printed,
Have
Changing the divided region based on the image region and the image attribute acquired by the image region detecting unit and the image attribute acquiring unit;
A printing method characterized by the above.

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