Patent ID: 7167268

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a receiving section which receives image data over the Internet and temporarily stores the image data; a printing section which prints the temporarily stored image data; a category defining section which defines categories of volume of image data by means of threshold values, the threshold values being defined depending on a total capacity of the receiving section; an output destination specifying section which specifies the destination of output of the temporarily stored image data from a plurality of output sections including the printing section by referring to the categories defined by the category defining section; a judging section which determines the category of the received image data as defined by the category defining section; and a processing section which processes the image data in accordance with the output section for the category as determined by the judging section, wherein the category defining section defines at least a first category which corresponds to a first threshold value, and a second category which corresponds to a second threshold value greater than the first threshold value, wherein, when the volume of image data is less than the first threshold, the processing section processes the image data by printing the image data, wherein, when the volume of image data is greater than the first threshold but less than the second threshold, the processing section processes the image data by displaying the image data on a display, and wherein, when the volume of image data is greater than the second threshold, the processing section processes the image data by storing the image data onto a computer memory.