Patent 7450757 was granted and assigned to Sony on November, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Distribution data is generated by a distribution data generation portion, a second range is specified by a specifying portion, the second range is mapped to a first range by a mapping portion, and third image data is generated by performing binarization based on a threshold value regulated in the first range by components, binarization can be suitably performed even in the case where distribution data of pixel values differs for each subject.