Patent ID: 8379274

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an input section, arranged to input image data; a determining section, arranged to determine a degree of necessity of trapping at a position of a pixel of interest of the input image data; a trapping section, arranged to perform trapping for the input image data; an edge-enhancement section, arranged to perform edge-enhancement processing for a pixel of interest of the input image data; and an output section, arranged to calculate image data to be output by weighting an output of the trapping section and an output of the edge-enhancement section in accordance with the degree of necessity determined by the determining section, wherein the determining section comprises: a first counting section configured to count dark pixels by scanning a periphery of a pixel of interest; a second counting section configured to count light pixels by scanning a periphery of the pixel of interest; and a deciding section configured to decide, based on a count value of the dark pixels of the first counting section and a count value of the light pixels of the second counting section, whether to further count the dark pixels and the light pixels by the first and second counting sections while extending a region of the scan, or to output a result of the determination including the degree of necessity, and wherein the deciding section determines to perform the trapping for a position of the pixel of interest in a case where the count value of the dark pixels and the count value of the light pixels are equal to or larger than a predetermined threshold, and determines not to perform the trapping for a position of the pixel of interest in a case where a region of the scan exceeds a predetermined window region while the count value of the dark pixels and the count value of the light pixels are smaller than the threshold.