Patent ID: 8294912

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a reception unit adapted to receive print instructing information from a host; a first conversion unit adapted to convert the received print instructing information into intermediate information capable of a rendering process; a second conversion unit adapted to convert the intermediate information into pieces of span information of respective scan lines; a color filling unit adapted to assign a color to the pieces of span information of respective scan lines, thereby generating pieces of run-length information of respective scan lines, each of which includes color information and repeat information; a generation unit adapted to generate pieces of pixel information in the tile sequence by rendering the pieces of run-length information; a segmentation unit adapted to segment pieces of input information of respective scan lines into pieces of information of respective scan lines in tiles, thereby rearranging the pieces of input information into pieces of output information of respective tiles; a compression unit adapted to perform a compression process for the pieces of pixel information in the tile sequence for each tile, thereby generating compressed data; a storage unit adapted to store a page of compressed data of respective tiles; and a printing unit adapted to perform a print process using the compressed data which are stored in said storage unit and compressed for each tile, wherein said segmentation unit uses the pieces of span information of respective scan lines from said second conversion unit as the pieces of input information, segments the pieces of span information of respective scan lines into pieces of span information of respective scan lines in tiles to rearrange the pieces of span information of respective scan lines in tiles into pieces of span information of respective tiles, and outputs the rearranged pieces of span information of respective tiles as the pieces of output information to said color filling unit.