A method and apparatus for compressing a color image by reducing the amount of color information initially acquired. The color information can later be restored by interpolation from other portions of the image where the color information is available. This not only reduces the amount of data that needs to be stored, but improves the scanning time for an image scanner by reducing the amount of time needed to scan the image. In a preferred embodiment, both the scanning time and the amount of data can be cut in half.
The present invention provides a color image reader installed on an image reader such as a hand scanner whose reading speed may change during reading. A hand scanner has an encoder sensor which outputs movement amount data to a relative speed monitoring unit. In response to relative hand scanner speed data (normalized value) output from the relative speed monitoring unit, a positional compensation processing unit aligns the R, G, and B signals and outputs the aligned R, G, and B signals
