METHOD FOR PARTIALLY SMOOTHING RETOUCH IN ELECTRONIC COLOR REPRODUCTION

A method for smoothing retouch in electronic color image reproduction employs a coordinate pen used by the retoucher as a retouch brush, to identify image point coordinates within an image point area. The color values associated with the image point coordinates are changed as a function of the color values of the nearby image point coordinates. The size of the areas which have their color values changed is operator-selectable. The color values of the areas which are changed can be matched to the marginal values of the area, or may be replaced by a mean value of the color values within the area. By this means image contours may be flattened, and the effective noise in the image surfaces may be minimized.