Patent ID: 8363241

Claim:
An apparatus for processing an image, the apparatus comprising: an image acquiring unit to acquire an image; a determining unit to determine whether the image acquired by the image acquiring unit includes first information previously embedded therein; a storage unit to store therein the image acquired by the image acquiring unit when the determining unit determines that the image includes the first information; an information generating unit to generate second information to be newly embedded in the image acquired by the image acquiring unit; an information embedding unit to embed, after the storage unit stores therein the image, the second information generated by the generating unit in the image acquired by the image acquiring unit, by overwriting the first information or deleting the first information; a printing unit to print the image in which the second information is embedded; an information extracting unit to extract, from the image stored in the storage unit, the first information that is previously embedded in the image; an information registering unit to register, in a database, the first information that is previously embedded in the image in association with the second information that is newly embedded in the image; and an information retrieving unit to, upon receipt of a request from a user asking for the first information previously embedded in the image, refer to and search the database for the second information newly embedded in the image so as to retrieve the previously embedded first information corresponding to the newly embedded second information, wherein the determining unit is configured to extract a part of the image acquired by the image acquiring unit, and is further configured to calculate a frequency of a near-white region of the image and a frequency of a region of the image having luminance lower than the white region and determine that the image acquired by the image acquiring unit includes the first information previously embedded therein when a ratio of the calculated frequencies satisfies a predetermined condition.