Image Processing Apparatus Stabilizing Skin Tone Correction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing image processing techniques for moving images, such as skin texture correction, face issues with fluctuating representative colors due to slight movements and compression noise, leading to unnatural correction results like floating or flickering effects when applied to continuous frames.
Innovation Solution
An image processing apparatus that updates a reference color only when the similarity between the representative color and the reference color exceeds a predetermined threshold, generating a correction map to stabilize the correction range and intensity, and applies a blur filter based on edge intensity to achieve natural smoothing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the representative color is updated for each frame to track skin color changes, then the correction can adapt to illumination changes, but the correction range and intensity fluctuate causing floating or flickering effects
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic reference color management by comparing the representative color of each frame with the stored reference color and only updating when the difference exceeds a threshold. This dynamic update mechanism allows the system to adapt to genuine illumination changes while filtering out minor fluctuations from compression noise and slight movements, thereby resolving the contradiction between adaptability and stability.
2Productivity
If correction is applied to each frame independently to process moving images, then processing speed is maintained, but unnatural flickering occurs due to color fluctuations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary action by pre-storing the reference color obtained from the first frame and using it as a baseline for subsequent frames. This preliminary establishment of a stable reference point enables fast independent frame processing while ensuring natural correction results, as each frame is corrected based on the stable reference rather than fluctuating representative colors.
3Measurement precision
If the correction threshold is set low to detect subtle skin color changes, then correction precision is improved, but compression noise and slight movements cause unnecessary corrections
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary anti-action by establishing a threshold comparison mechanism that prevents unnecessary corrections. Before applying correction based on representative color changes, the system first checks whether the change exceeds the threshold set value, thereby counteracting the harmful effects of compression noise and slight movements that would otherwise cause false corrections.
Data Source
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AI summary
An image processing apparatus comprises an image acquiring unit configured to acquire an image; a representative-color acquiring unit configured to acquire a representative color, which is a color representing a target region where the correction is performed, from the acquired image; and an image correcting unit configured to perform correction processing on the image on the basis of a set reference color, wherein the image correcting unit updates the reference color with the representative color when similarity between the representative color corresponding to the processing target image and the reference color is equal to or smaller than a predetermined threshold, and does not update the reference color when the similarity is larger than the predetermined threshold.