Patent ID: 7110007

Claim:
An image processing apparatus for combining a first raster image and a second raster image, comprising: a segmentation unit, arranged to segment the first raster image into plural segment images, each of which has plural pixels and a first predetermined size included in a first segmented image group, and to segment the second raster image into plural segmented images, each of which has plural pixels and a second predetermined size, included in a second segment image group; an addition unit, arranged to add first unique information to each segmented image of the first segmented image group to discriminate between the segmented images of the first segmented image group, and to add second unique information to each segmented image of the second segmented image group to discriminate between the segmented images of the second segmented image group; a determination unit, arranged to determine whether or not each segmented image of the first segmented image group includes an image to be combined with the second raster image, based on the pixels of each segmented image; an extraction unit, arranged to extract each segmented image of the first segmented image group which has the first predetermined size and is determined by said determination unit to include the image to be combined by said determination unit with the second raster image, and to extract each segmented image from the second segmented image group which has the second predetermined size and the added information corresponding to that of the extracted segmented image of the first segmented image group; a combination unit, arranged to combine the segmented image of the first segmented image group, which has the first predetermined size and is extracted by said extraction unit, with a corresponding segmented image of the second segmented image group, which has the second predetermined size and is extracted by said extraction unit; and a generation unit, arranged to generate a synthetic image, as the result of synthesis of the first and second raster images, from at least one image combined by said combination unit and at least one segmented image of the second segmented image group which is not extracted by said extraction unit.