Patent ID: 8300899

Claim:
An image processing apparatus, comprising: an image inputting device which inputs an image; a face image detecting device which detects a face image of a person from the image inputted by the image inputting device; an automatic mask deciding device which decides whether or not each face image is to be masked based on a size of each of the face images in an identical image compared to a face image with a maximum area in the identical image, a direction of each of the faces in each of the face images detected by the face image detecting device, or a number of other images in which a face image of a same person in the image appears; a transferring device which transfers an image obtained by masking an area of a face image which is decided to be masked by the automatic masking deciding device for the image inputted by the image inputting device to an external device, or transfers the image inputted by the image inputting device and information indicating the area of the face image which is decided to be masked by the automatic mask deciding device to an external device.