Exposure control method for photographic printing

Claim 1

An exposure control method for printing an original image from a single image of a frame of a photographic film on a photographic paper, comprising the steps of: (a) uniformly illuminating the single frame of the original image on the photographic film; (b) color-separating transmitted light from the illuminated single frame of photographic film into a plurality of colors; (c) obtaining an average photometric value of the original image of the single frame for each color by measuring the color-separated plurality of colors; (d) determining a tentative exposure amount for each color based on the obtained average photometric value for each color; (e) obtaining image information by a color-separated scanning of the original image of the single frame, the image information including image density data that represents a two-dimensional density distribution for each color; (f) evaluating color dominancy in the original image of the single frame by analyzing the image information obtained by said color-separated scanning of the original image; (g) determining an exposure correction level based on results obtained in the evaluating step; (h) correcting the tentative exposure amount to a corrected amount based on the determined exposure correction level; and (i) controlling an exposure amount to be the corrected amount.