Method and apparatus for processing images, and image display apparatus

[0026]FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a general configuration of an image display apparatus 10 according to Embodiment 1 of the present invention.

[0027]The image display apparatus 10 according to Embodiment 1 includes an input terminal 1, a high frequency (HF) component preprocessor 2, a partial magnification / reduction controller 3, a gray level calculator 4, and a display 5.

[0028]The input terminal 1 receives input image data Da that in turn is supplied to the HF component preprocessor 2. The preprocessor 2 is a HF-component smoothing processor that smoothes HF components of the input image data Da, to generate and deliver smoothed-HF-component image data Db. The partial magnification / reduction controller 3 delivers to the gray level calculator 4 partial magnification / reduction control information Sa that defines a pixel position obtained after expanding / reducing image data for each area of the data, based on a command of an amount of correction from a controller (not shown)

[0068]While in Embodiment 1 a situation where the HF component preprocessor 2 performs preprocessing using adjacent pixels in the horizontal direction of a pixel of interest has been described, HF component preprocessing may be performed, in addition to adjacent pixels in the horizontal direction, using those in the vertical direction, based on the smoothed-HF-component image data Db to be supplied from the image data selection unit 13. In this case, since the preprocessing using adjacent pixels in the vertical direction differs in terms of reference pixels alone and the rest of processing is similar to that of the selection unit 13 as discussed above, detail description thereof will be omitted. In this manner, after the preprocessing has been performed by using adjacent pixels in the horizontal direction, another preprocessing is done by using those in the vertical direction, whereby a pattern that cannot be detected by only preprocessing in the horizontal direction—for instance, a st