IMAGE ENCODING APPARATUS AND IMAGE DECODING PART

The present invention has been conceived to solve the previously described problems, and provides a texture representation method without any unnatural feeling while performing data compression equivalent to a conventional data compression or more. An input signal is separated in two frequency domains. The low-frequency component is faithfully coded by a conventional image/video coding apparatus. The high-frequency component is analyzed to compute representative texture parameters. Instead of faithfully coding the high-frequency component, only the computed texture parameters are stored or transmitted to a decoding apparatus. Then, the low-frequency component is reconstructed, whereas the high-frequency component is replaced by a natural texture that has been synthesized according to the texture parameters. The reconstructed low-frequency component and the synthesized high-frequency component are merged to generate an output signal.