Abstract:
An image forming apparatus includes a login unit configured to receive a login of a user; a program storage unit; a function introduction unit configured to obtain a first program licensed to the user and license information of the first program, and to store the first program and the license information in the program storage unit without deleting a second program that is a different version of the first program from the program storage unit; a user information storage unit configured to store user information that registers license information of introduced programs and version information with user IDs; and a function providing unit configured to specify license information and version information that are associated with a user ID of a user who logs into the image forming apparatus in order to provide a function realized by a program corresponding to the license information and the version information to the user.
Abstract:
An image forming system is provided which controls usage of a plurality of image forming apparatuses connected to a network for each user of the image forming system. Usage of the plurality of image forming apparatuses is permitted or prohibited based on information in a disable flag associated with each user.
Abstract:
An improved image processing method for generating an image from a hard copy document includes the following steps: scanning the hard copy document multiple times using a scanner to generate a plurality of images; performing deskewing for each image; performing translational compensation for each image; selecting two images (first and second) among the plurality of images that have the highest similarity to each other; dilating the first image; converting the dilated first image into a binary form; eroding the converted first image to generate a first processed image; eroding the second image; converting the eroded second image into a binary form; dilating the converted second image to generate a second processed image; and extracting common portions of the first and second processed images to generate a final image. This method can be used to generate high quality scanned images of hard copy documents for purposes of document authentication.
Abstract:
An object of the present invention is to provide an image forming apparatus which can guarantee the originality of a document consisting of a plurality of pages. To achieve the object, an image forming apparatus of the present invention includes an extracting unit that extracts fiber information from paper media; a first storage unit that synthesizes and storing fiber information extracted from pages of a first paper medium consisting of a plurality of pages by using the extracting unit as first fiber information; a second storage unit that synthesizes and stores fiber information extracted from pages of a second paper medium consisting of a plurality of pages by using the extracting unit as second fiber information; and a comparing unit that compares the first fiber information and the second fiber information and determining whether these match each other.