This disclosure relates to a method and system of cropping an image, specifically a method and system for preventing image content loss in producing an image print from a previewed digital image.
Images can be generated in several ways. For example, an image can be captured using a film-based or digital camera and/or created and edited using image processing software. Images captured using a film-based camera typically are stored as film negatives. Images captured using a digital camera typically are stored as digital files residing in the memory of the digital camera and/or a storage medium to which the file has been transferred (for example, a hard drive or CDROM). Images created using image processing software are typically stored as a digital file residing on a computer readable medium such as a hard drive.
An image-based product can be generated from such stored images. As used here, the term “image-based product” refers to an item, regardless of medium, that includes a visual representation of at least a portion of one or more images. One example of an image-based product is an image print (also referred as photograph or photographic print). Other image-based products include, but not limited to, greeting cards, post cards, photo calendars, photo albums, snapbooks, photo frames, photo mugs, photo mouse pad, photo T-shirt, imaging cakes, photo archive CDs.
When a customer wishes to have a high-quality image print generated from a digital image, the customer needs not physically take the digital image to a photo-finishing laboratory and instead can electronically transmit the digital image to an “online” photo-finishing laboratory using a computer network such as the Internet. The customer can use an Internet browser program. The customer can direct the browser to a web site associated with the photo-finishing service provider and upload the digital image to a server hosting the web site. The photo-finishing service provider can then take the digital image from the web server and produce a high-quality image print from the digital image in a conventional manner.
Digital imaging technologies allow users to preview images on electronic displays before the images are printed. The digital images may exist in different dimensions and aspect ratios depending on the image capture devices. Digital images and image prints are typically in rectangular shapes. The aspect ratio of an image, or digital image, or an image print is the ratio of the two dimensions of the rectangular image area. Typically, an aspect ratio is the ratio of the long dimension over the short dimension of the image area. For example, digital cameras may have different image sensor dimensions. Typical aspect ratios of the consumer digital cameras include 1.33 (4:3) and 1.5 (3:2). The dimensions of scanned digital images are dependent on the dimensions of the area scanned. Typical photographic print formats include 4″×6″, 5″×7″, 8″×10″, 11″×14″ and so on. The digital images need to be cropped to the proper aspect ratios of the output print format before the digital images can be printed.
A long recognized problem in previewing and printing digital images is that a portion of the image content that is visible in preview may be lost on the printed image. For example, a user may see the face of a person near the top edge of an image in a preview on an electronic display when he selects the digital image for printing. In preparing for printing, the top portion of the digital image is cropped off. The user is surprised to find that part or all of the person's face is cropped off on the printed image. The above described undesired cropping has been a source of frequent customer complaints to photo printing services.
Methods and apparatus are disclosed for printing an input digital image having a first aspect ratio, comprising
In one aspect, the present invention solves a long felt need in the digital photo-finishing field: portion of the image content viewable in an image preview is often lost when the image is reproduced on an images print. The present invention provides an improved system and methods for previewing digital images of different aspect ratios and printing the digital images at different print formats (i.e. “safe cropping”). The present invention allows all the image content viewable to the user in a preview of the digital image to be printed on an image receiver, independent of the format of the image prints. No image content is lost from previewing to printing.
In another aspect of the present invention, a system and methods are provided to properly process digital images for digital printing at different print formats. The aspect ratio and the image area of the preview image of a digital image are calculated using a predetermined algorithm that accounts for all the print formats available in the system. A portion of the image content of the original digital image is displayed for preview to prevent unwanted cropping of images in printing. After the user selects the print format at certain aspect ratio, the un-displayed image portions are patched with the displayed image portion to make up to the correct aspect ratio. The printed image content is therefore always equal or more than what's displayed. No image content is lost from preview to printing.
In yet another aspect, the present invention provides improved (“safe cropping”) methods for applying image borders to digital images for digital printing. The aspect ratio of the image portion within an image border on the final image print is calculated based on the aspect ratio of the print format and the border widths. The aspect ratios of the visible image portion within the image border are calculated for all print formats. The maximum printable image portion is determined for each print format for an input digital image. Only the common safe preview portion is displayed for preview.
The details of one or more implementation of the invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features, objects, and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims.
Various implementations of the systems and techniques described here may be realized in digital electronic circuitry, or in computer hardware, firmware, software, or in combinations thereof. A system or other apparatus that uses one or more of the techniques and methods described here may be implemented as a computer-readable storage medium, configured with a computer program, where the storage medium so configured causes a computer system to operate on input and/or generate output in a specific and predefined manner. Such a computer system may include one or more programmable processors that receive data and instructions from, and transmit data and instructions to, a data storage system, and suitable input and output devices. Each computer program may be implemented in a high-level procedural or object-oriented programming language, or in assembly or machine language if desired; and in any case, the language may be a compiled or interpreted language. Suitable processors include, by way of example, both general and special purpose microprocessors.
The user can order prints of different print formats to be made using the digital image by the photo-finishing service provider in step 130 of
As previously described, a problem in the digital photo printing industry is the undesired image content loss in printing digital images. For a selected print format, any portion of the input image with the same aspect ratio as that of the selected print format is a printable image portion. The maximum printable image portion is a printable image portion with the most possible information of the input image. Any portion of the input image outside the maximum printable image portion is the un-printable image portion.
For example, to produce an 8″×10″ image print, a digital image having an aspect ratio of 1.25 (10:8) is required. The maximum printable image portion 220 for an 8″×10″ print format is determined in step 140 as illustrated in
Although the maximum printable image portion 220 is shown to be aligned to the left edge of input the digital image 210, the maximum printable image portion 220 can be at any other horizontal positions as long as the full width of the maximum printable image portion 220 is within the input digital image 210. This is illustrated in
Similarly, the location the unprintable image portion 330 in
It is the user's choice to select the best location of the maximum printable image portion of an input image for the preview.
The present invention is applicable to portrait and landscape image orientations. The problem of the image content loss may exist in different forms for the portrait and landscape image orientations. For example, in
In accordance with the present invention, the preview image displayed to the user is kept equal to or smaller than the maximum printable image portion for the print format. Since only the whole or part of the maximum printable image portion is previewed, all the image content that is visible to a user in preview can be printed. The problem of unexpected image content loss is prevented.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, the preview image can be specific to a user-selected print format. For example, if a user selects an 8″×10″ print for the input digital image 210, an image area equal to or smaller than the maximum printable image portion 220 (
In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, the preview image is selected to be within the image portion printable to all print formats (step 160 in
The advantage of this embodiment is that one preview image is provided for previewing all available print formats while guaranteeing no image content loss from the previewed image in printing (i.e. safe cropping).
The present invention is applicable to previewing and printing an input digital image having an image border. In accordance with the present invention, the image border can exist in different designs such as art borders (shadow, blur, black lines etc.), even and uneven border widths around the four sides of the image, or image borders along any number of the four sides. Examples of border designs are provided by Shutterfly, Inc. at “www.shutterfly.com”. The borders can also carry themes like holidays, wedding, birthday, “Thank You”, “Welcome”, etc. Another example is a 4″×8″ holiday card having a 2″×4″ area on one side (typically the right end) and a 6″×4″ image area with or without additional image border.
For each print format coupled with each available image border, as shown in
Returning to
In step 670 of
Although the above discloses “the safe cropping” in printing of an image from a preview image, the present invention is applicable to “safe cropping” from a previewed image to different output media. For example, a preview of an input image may be intended to be presented in soft electronic display at different image formats. The method described above can be used to produce a preview image for producing any of these output image media in one of a plurality of image formats. The procedure involves in providing a plurality of image formats for producing the output image media, calculating a viewable image portion of the input digital image for each image format on the output image media, determining a common safe preview portion of the digital image for all image formats on the output image media; and displaying the common safe preview portion of the digital image for preview prior to producing the output image media. In general, output image media can be a combination of hardcopy and soft display objects.
The above described invention is compatible with local or remote previewing and printing situations. The imaging software can be installed on a desktop computer or provided through a web browser over the Internet. The preview image can be displayed in both environments. The printing can be conducted local to the computer or the display device or at a remote location such as a central photofinishing lab.
A number of implementations of the invention have been described. Nevertheless, it will be understood that various modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. For example, the operations of the processes and methods described here can be performed in a different order and still achieve desirable results. Also, the processes, methods, and systems described here can be used to change a variety of product attributes. Accordingly, other implementations are within the scope of the following claims.
The present invention is related to commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,596 “System and method of cropping an image”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,583,799 “Image Uploading”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/721,484, filed on Nov. 22, 2000, titled “User Interface and Methods for On-line Print Service”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/560,609, filed on Apr. 28, 2000, titled “System and Method of Providing a User Interface for Changing Attributes of an Image-based Product”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/684,595, filed on Oct. 5, 2000, titled “Previewing a framed image print”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 9/972,602, filed on Oct. 5, 2000, titled “Managing and searching digital images”, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/106,902, filed on Mar. 25, 2002, titled “Producing and sharing personalized photo calendar”, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/185,862, filed Jun. 28, 2002, titled “Personalized photo greeting cards”. The disclosures of these related applications are incorporated herein by reference.