Patent · US Expired

Image quality maintenance

US6243502A · kind A · utility

12Cited by
3References
29Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateAug 13, 1998
Grant dateJun 5, 2001
Priority date
Expiry dateAug 13, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04N2201/328
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method and system is presented for improving and/or maintaining the quality of a digital image file by preserving information that was included at image capture and lost during an image editing/processing operation. Generally, image-description information is stored in structured fields that collectively are described as the image's header. The image's header are stored in an image's file in addition to the image's pixel values. This invention produces and maintains a level of quality of the original enriched image files. This is accomplished by extracting image-description information prior to the processing of an image by an editing package, by selecting, storing and preserving the image-descriptive information data. The so stored data is combined with the editing package's processed image file, to produce an enriched processed image file. The enriched files includes the preserved data which would otherwise be discards. Header information is saved before an image manipulation process is performed. After the image is modified, all or portions of the header information is reinserted into the processed image file. For example, this may be used to preserve header information used t…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.