OUTLINE EMPHASIZING CIRCUIT, OUTLINE EMPHASIZING METHOD, IMAGING DEVICE, AND VIEW FINDER

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To excellently emphasize an outline without emphasizing noise components. SOLUTION: An outline emphasizing circuit has an outline emphasized signal generation section comprising a horizontal HPF 105, a vertical HPF 106, and an arithmetic unit 109, and an outline emphasized signal generation section comprising a right-downside oblique HPF 107, a left-downside HPF 108, and an arithmetic unit 110. Each of the generation section extracts high-frequency components of two mutually orthogonal directions from an input video signal Vin and subtract and subtracts a high-frequency component smaller in absolute value from the high-frequency component larger in absolute value to obtain an outline emphasized signals Shv or Srl. An arithmetic unit 111 outputs an outline emphasized signal larger in absolute value between the outline emphasized signals Shv and Srl as an outline emphasized signal so as to be used finally. The outline emphasized signals Shv and Srl both have small values at isolation points of noise and the signal So becomes small. COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT