SPATIALLY DEPENDENT TEXTURE ANALYSIS AND CONTROL IN DIGITAL HALFTONING

Image texture is one of the aspects of the characterization of images that is important in image synthesis as well as analysis. Typically, the textural properties of an image are spatially variable and change with other image characteristics such as the local average graytone or the gradient of the image. A space-variant texture metric for halftone images is proposed that allows the identification and quantification of the images’ spatially dependent texture characteristics, whereby texture elements are used to characterize the texture. Further, a method for the synthesis of halftone images with the control of spatially variable texture characteristics by incorporating the metric in a halftoning algorithm is presented. The procedures for image analysis and synthesis are described and examples are given.