Patent ID: 7215446

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an image reading section for reading an image including a document; an image processing section for distinguishing and recognizing an area in the image where the document is present and an area in the image where the document is absent, with reference to an area recognition threshold value based on an output of the image reading section; an erasing section for erasing a portion of the image output from the image reading section corresponding to the area where the document is absent, wherein the erasing section is operable to perform a rectangle erasing function in which an area inside a minimum quadrilateral including the document is considered to be a document area, and an oblique angle erasing function in which an area formed by both edges of each primary scanning line of the document read by the image reading section is considered to be the document area; and a manual selector for manually selecting one of: (i) the rectangle erasing function, (ii) the oblique angle erasing function, and (iii) an instruction to perform an automatic selection of one of the rectangle erasing function and the oblique angle erasing function based on a rectangle erasing threshold value and a document background level value.