Patent ID: 7889382

Claim:
A method of controlling an image processing apparatus, comprising: a barcode acquisition step of acquiring a barcode contained in a scanned image; an obtaining step of obtaining, from among images stored in a storage device, a stored image which contains the barcode, using the barcode acquired in said barcode acquisition step; a first determination step of determining whether or not information stored in the storage device in association with the stored image obtained in said obtaining step indicates that the stored image is to be synthesized with a second image; a synthesized-image generation step of generating a synthesized-image in a temporary storage location, when it is determined in said first determination step that the information indicates the stored image is to be synthesized with the second image, by overwriting barcode image data of the stored image with image data of the second image, to thereby generate a synthesized-image having no barcode image data in the temporary storage location, while retaining the stored image which contains the barcode in the storage device; and an output step of outputting the synthesized-image generated in said synthesized-image generation step or, when said first determination step determines that the information indicates the stored image is not to be synthesized with the second image, outputting the stored image, wherein the stored image includes a first image in an area other than the area of the barcode, the first image and the second image are images consisting of big dots and small dots, and wherein at least said first determination step and said synthesized-image generation step are performed by a processor.