1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image layout apparatus and an image layout method for laying out a plurality of images on one background image. The present invention also relates to a program that causes a computer to execute the image layout method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In images including people, positions of the people are highly important. Especially, in identification photographs used for passports or the like, faces in predetermined sizes need to be positioned at predetermined positions in images of predetermined sizes. Therefore, methods have been proposed wherein a face is extracted from an image and the extracted face is resized and trimmed so as to have a predetermined size and to be positioned at a predetermined position (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Nos. 11(1999)-341272, 2000-270198, and 2000-270199).
Furthermore, another method has been proposed for the case where images of people are laid out in each page as in a school yearbook or the like (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-165648). In this method, face regions extracted from images obtained by photography of respective persons are normalized and a photograph album is generated by pasting the face regions having been subjected to the normalization. According to this method, respective faces in the album have the same size. Consequently, the album can be generated to look fine.
In the case of images obtained by ordinary photography such as in a trip or athletics meet, the respective images may include a plurality of persons. In this case, each of the persons may be normalized and trimmed. However, if each of the persons is normalized and trimmed, the atmosphere at the time of photography represented in the images is greatly ruined.