An image processing apparatus for generating, based on an input image, a halftone image to be provided to an image forming unit which forms an image on a printing medium, comprising: first recovery processing means for performing, on the input image, first recovery processing for compensating for sharpness degradation of a lower-frequency component, which corresponds to frequencies lower than a predetermined frequency, in an image formed by the image forming unit; second recovery processing means for performing, on the input image, second recovery processing for compensating for sharpness degradation of an all-frequency component in the image formed by the image forming unit; and color separation means for generating print data from the input image having undergone the first recovery processing; characterized by : generating means for generating a recovery amount of each pixel based on a difference image between the input image having undergone the second recovery processing and the input image having undergone the first recovery processing; and halftone processing means for generating, based on the recovery amount, the halftone image by performing halftone processing on the print data, in that a number of dots in a region of the halftone image is determined by dither processing on a corresponding region of the print data, and the dots of the determined number are arranged at pixels in the region of the halftone image in the order of a dot arrangement priority of each pixel as calculated based on a value corresponding to the pixel in the print data, a threshold corresponding to the pixel, and the recovery amount corresponding to the pixel. first recovery processing means for performing, on the input image, first recovery processing for compensating for sharpness degradation of a lower-frequency component, which corresponds to frequencies lower than a predetermined frequency, in an image formed by the image forming unit; second recovery processing means for performing, on the input image, second recovery processing for compensating for sharpness degradation of an all-frequency component in the image formed by the image forming unit; and color separation means for generating print data from the input image having undergone the first recovery processing; characterized by : generating means for generating a recovery amount of each pixel based on a difference image between the input image having undergone the second recovery processing and the input image having undergone the first recovery processing; and halftone processing means for generating, based on the recovery amount, the halftone image by performing halftone processing on the print data, in that generating means for generating a recovery amount of each pixel based on a difference image between the input image having undergone the second recovery processing and the input image having undergone the first recovery processing; and halftone processing means for generating, based on the recovery amount, the halftone image by performing halftone processing on the print data, in that a number of dots in a region of the halftone image is determined by dither processing on a corresponding region of the print data, and the dots of the determined number are arranged at pixels in the region of the halftone image in the order of a dot arrangement priority of each pixel as calculated based on a value corresponding to the pixel in the print data, a threshold corresponding to the pixel, and the recovery amount corresponding to the pixel. <EOS>