Patent ID: 7580562

Claim:
An image processing method for judging image type, the method comprising: inputting image data through an image data input portion of an image processing device; a first judging by a first judgment portion of the image processing device of whether the type of image indicated by said image data is a first type; and a second judging by a second judgment portion of the image processing device of image data having been judged as being of said first type, as to whether the type of image is a second type, wherein in at least one of the first judging and the second judging, a given image type is further finely classified into sub-classes and different image processing for each sub-class is provided by the image processing device, and in either the first judging or the second judging, a certain criterion component and a chromatic color component are compared in order to judge whether a specific chromatic color component is distributed disproportionately, and image type is classified into a sub-class depending on whether disproportion is present.