1. Technical Field
The invention relates to an image processing technology for executing deformation of an image.
2. Related Art
An image processing technology for deforming a digital image has been known, which is, for example, described in JP-A-2004-318204. JP-A-2004-318204 describes an image processing that deforms the shape of a face in such a manner that portion of an area on the image of the face (an area that shows the image of a cheek) is set as a correction area, the correction area is divided into a plurality of small areas in accordance with a predetermined pattern, and the image is enlarged or reduced by a scaling factor set for each small area.
In this existing image processing for image deformation, because enlargement or reduction of an image is performed for each of a plurality of small areas by a scaling factor that is set for each of the small areas, the processing is complicated. In addition, the above existing image processing for image deformation is exclusively configured for correcting the line of a cheek, and it is difficult to be used for other various deformation modes. Incidentally, a cropping process that clips part of an area from original image data is sometimes performed on image data. When a human face is included in image data targeted for image processing, an image area that includes the face may extend off a cropped image that is clipped through cropping. If an image area that is at least partially trimmed by cropping is targeted for image deformation in this manner, a natural deformation result is not always obtained, so that it is inappropriate. Thus, some measures need to be taken for handling the above image area that is partially trimmed by cropping; however, there has been no method for appropriately handling the image area so far.