METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATIC RECOGNITION OF IMAGE AND TEXT/ GRAPHICS AREAS ON A MASTER

An apparatus and method for automatic recognition of image and text/graphics areas on a master undertake an opto-electronic scanning of the master with analog values obtained by the scanning being sampled and converted into digital information which is stored in a data field which is divided into a number of windows having edge lengths selected to be greater than the spacing between two successive lines of text. A grayscale value histogram is generated for each window and is statistically analyzed for determining whether the area of the master represented by the window is predominantly a text/graphics area or an image area based on known statistical characteristics generally related to each type of area.