MULTIRESOLUTION DIGITAL IMAGERY PHOTOFINISHING SYSTEM

摘要

A photoprocessing, photofinishing apparatusenables an unskilled consumer to personally customizeand obtain high quality prints of photographic imageswithout the intervention of a skilled technician. Italso provides for the storage and retrieval of highresolution digitized color still images for playback toa variety of reproduction devices. The apparatuscomprises a high resolution film scanner which scans35mm film and outputs high resolution image signals.These signals are digitized and coupled to a host imagedata processing unit, which stores each image file in amultiresolution, hierarchical format that facilitatesretrieval of images for reproduction by a variety ofdevices the resolution of which may vary from device todevice, such as a low/moderate NTSC television monitoror a very high resolution color thermal printer. Thehost processor is coupled to an interactive displayterminal, through which the customer may manipulate alow resolution version of a selected image file. Theapparatus may also be used by a skilled photofinishingminilab operator to produce a permanent record ofimages that have been digitized from one or morephotographic image sources. In this application, thehost computer may be coupled to drive an opticalcompact disc recorder which writes each hierarchicalimage file and an appended header file to an opticalcompact disc. The customer may then play back the discon a CD player modified for display on a hometelevision monitor.