Patent ID: 6868183

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: input means for inputting image data of an original image; discriminating means for extracting a predetermined region by using a feature of pixel of the image data input from the input means, and for discriminating an attribute of the region; determining means for, on the basis of the distribution of the regions attributes of which are discriminated by the discriminating means, determining whether or not the type of the image data is a rectangular discriminative region; and conversion means for performing image conversion when the determining means determines that the predetermined region extracted by the discriminating means is the rectangular discriminative region, said conversion means converting the image to lower resolution or increasing a compression rate of the image where the attribute of the region discriminated by the discriminating means is one of a dot photo region and a continuous photo region, and converting multi-valued data of the image into binary data to reduce the quantity of information contained in each rectangular discriminative region when the attribute of the rectangular discriminative region is such that it contains only black characters.