Patent ID: 8824786

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a first extraction unit that extracts from an image a region having an information image and a color of the information image, the information image representing information embedded in the image; a second extraction unit that extracts a color of a peripheral image surrounding the region extracted by the first extraction unit; a third extraction unit that extracts information necessary for color quantization processing to be performed on the image; a determination unit that determines whether or not a color difference that is a difference between the color of the information image extracted by the first extraction unit and the color of the peripheral image extracted by the second extraction unit falls within a predetermined range when color quantization processing is based on the information extracted by the third extraction unit; a correction unit that corrects a representative color if the determination unit determines that the color difference does not fall within the predetermined range, the representative color being representative of a color of an image that has been subjected to color quantization processing; and a color quantization unit that performs color quantization processing on the image on the basis of the representative color corrected by the correction unit.