Image processing apparatus and method

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention is made in consideration of the above drawbacks and it is an object of the invention to eliminate a discontinuous portion and to allow a compression result of a color space to have a good gradation.
Another object of the invention is to faithfully reproduce in a predetermined range by a linear mapping and not to cause a discontinuous portion at a boundary of a linear mapping and a non-linear mapping.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a color space compressing process according to an application of the user.
Under the above objects, according to the preferred embodiment of the invention, there is provided an image processing apparatus comprising: input means for inputting image data; and color space compressing means for performing a color mapping to the input image data by a combination of a linear mapping and a non-linear mapping.
Further, according to the preferred embodiment of the invention, there is provided an image processing apparatus comprising input means for inputting image data; a linear mapping mode for performing a linear mapping to the image data; a non-linear mapping mode for performing a non-linear mapping to the image data; and manual selecting means for manually selecting either one of the linear mapping mode and the non-linear mapping mode.
The above and other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description and the appended claims with reference to the accompanying drawings.