Foreground/Background Separation Using Reference Images

A hand-held or otherwise portable or spatial or temporal performance-based image capture device, comprising:

• (a) one or more lenses, an aperture and a photodetector for capturing an original main image and one or more reference images having a temporal or spatial overlap or proximity with the original image, or combinations thereof;
• (b) a processor;
• (c) one or more processor-readable media having embedded therein programming code for the processor to perform a digital image processing method of distinguishing between foreground and background regions of a digital image of a scene, the method comprising:
• (i) capturing first and second images of nominally the same scene, wherein the first and second images have the same pixel resolution, and wherein the first and second images are captured by a digital camera and are relatively low resolution reference image versions of a higher resolution image of said scene also captured by the camera, and the first image being taken with the foreground more in focus than the background, and the second image being taken with the background more in focus than the foreground;
• (ii) storing the captured images;
• (iii) assigning regions of the first image as foreground or background;
• and
• (iv) rendering in accordance with the assigning one or more processed images based on the first image or the second image, or both, at a digital rendering device, display or printer, or combinations thereof.