A system and method for scaling and enhancing color text images utilizes a binary scaling and text enhancing technique by first converting an input color text image to a binary image, i.e., black-and-white image. The scaled and text enhanced image is subsequently converted back to a color image by selectively inserting colors into the binary image to produce a color text image that has been scaled and text enhanced. The conversion of the input color text image to a binary image allows the system and method to use one of a number of conventional binary scaling and text enhancing techniques.

In an image processing apparatus which performs first and second operations, a first processor processes image data in correspondence to the first operation, while a second processor which processes image data in correspondence to the second operation. Further, a memory is shared by the first and second processors. A controller connects the first processor to the memory in the first operation and to connect the second processor to the memory in the second operation. For example, the above-mentioned first and second processors are constructed by a common device such as a field gate programmable array wherein a function thereof can be rewritten.

There are provided a method and an apparatus for acquiring an image for inspection of a flat panel display which can be advantageously used in inspecting any pixel defect of a flat panel display with high accuracy. An image of light and darkness of the flat panel display picked up by a solid state image pickup element is converted into digital image data, and any moire component is extracted from the image data to detect a period of the moire component. Pixel values of data collected at the period of moire from a data series in X-axis direction or Y-axis direction of the image data are connected to find a plurality of smoothed curves from which defect components have been eliminated. Differences between pixel values positioned on that plurality of smoothed curves and the original image data are found to obtain defect component image data, and an average of the plurality of smoothed curves is found to obtain smoothed image data containing no moire. This smoothed image data and the defect component image data are added and the addition result is stored in an image memory as image data for inspection.

An approach is provided for identifying black and white pages in a color document stream. This approach may be utilized in digital printing systems. This approach examines a small portion of the color data for a page to identify whether the color data is indicative of the page being a black and white page or a full color page. This approach also examines the relative sizes of compressed color separations for the pages. Pages that are determined to be black and white pages may be printed in a black and white mode, whereas full color pages may be printed in a full color page mode.

Input image information undergoes color conversion processing in a color conversion section 1, then is separated into first piece of image data, second piece of image data, and selection data in a multilayer data processing section 2 and transmission data in the multilayer data format is output. On the other hand, a 1-layer data processing section 3 prepares transmission data in the normal 1-layer data format from the image information. A color determination section 4 determines whether the input image information is a color or monochrome image. If the image information is determined a color image, a selection section 6 selects the transmission data in the multilayer data format; if the image information is determined a monochrome image, the selection section 6 selects the transmission data in the 1-layer data format. Then, it transmits the selected transmission data through a transmission section 7.