Abstract: An apparatus including a method of digital image processing which allows a user to remove narrow, elongated areas of image distortion from a digitized image. According to the method, the user selects a portion of an image to be edited and, once the portion has been identified, the image distortion within the portion is automatically removed. The procedure for removing the distortion includes the steps of delineating the distortion within the portion of the image selected and replacing the delineated area with a correction image which is created as a function of the attributes of the neighboring portions of the image.

Abstract: A technique of editing a digital image provides for the automatic removal of blotchy areas. From a user interface of a computer system, a user of the computer system identifies a location of a blotchy area to be removed in the digital image in response to prompting by the user interface. Based on the location provided by the user, the technique automatically determines the location of the blotchy area. Attributes of pixels comprising the digital image in a neighborhood around the blotchy area are automatically collected, while excluding the pixels comprising the blotchy area. The corrupted values of the pixels of the blotchy area are replaced with values derived at least in part from the attributes of the neighboring pixels Several different embodiments are described with various degrees of automation, including one embodiment in which all blotches of a character similar to the one selected by the user are automatically identified and removed.

Abstract: An apparatus and method is disclosed for automatically editing a digital color image to remove discoloration of the image, known as a "red eye" effect, by parsing the discoloration into regions and re-coloring the area of the discoloration based on the attributes of the discoloration. The editing process according to the invention automatically creates a bitmap that is a correction image, which is composited with the source image or a copy of it and displayed as the source image with the red eye effect corrected.

Abstract: A system and method is described for automatically editing digital images. An image to be edited is selected and registered with a model that is an abstract of features and attributes common to a category of images to which the selected image belongs. In the illustrated embodiment, a human face is used as an example of an image to be edited and the matching model is a representation of features and attributes common to all human faces. Many other images of objects may also be edited using the techniques of the invention, as long as a general class of objects to which an image belongs is amenable to being represented by a model comprising a set of common features or attributes. A library of different models is available to the user for selecting the model matching the image to be edited. The library includes different models of the same object in different orientations and may also include models of different objects.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for modifying a sprite containing a cutout feature for compositing with a background image modifies colors of pixels in the sprite according to their distances from the edge of the cutout feature to achieve desired visual effects such as edge softening. A distance mask for the sprite is generated which stores distance values representing distances of corresponding pixels in the sprite from the edge of the cutout feature. The distance mask can be efficiently generated by a chamfering technique. A clamping function is applied to the distance mask to determine scaling values for the respective pixels in the sprite. A modified sprite is constructed from the original sprite by modifying the colors of the pixels of the input sprite according to their respective scaling values. The modified sprite is then composited with the backgorund image to form a composite image.