IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD, AND IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide characteristics of a subject, that is, the sharpening of an image, which effectively reflects the quality of material, distance from a camera or the like. SOLUTION: An input image IN obtained from a subject scene SC is interpolated and enlarged (S1 and S2). The interpolated image is subjected to predetermined vector transformation to calculate an image feature vector, and the interpolated image is further divided into an edge contour part and a texture part (S3 and S4). On the other hand, a characteristic of a subject imaged in the image IN is obtained (S5) to calculate a physical characteristic parameter of the interpolated image (S6). In a process (S8), the physical characteristic parameter is used to transform the image feature vector so as to sharpen the interpolated image. The transformed image feature vector is subjected to transformation inverse to the vector transformation in the process S3 to generate an enlarged image ELI. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT