Patent ID: 8184343

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image data acquisition section for acquiring plural pieces of image data; an accessory information acquisition section for acquiring plural pieces of accessory information corresponding to respective pieces of the acquired image data; an accessory information processing section for subjecting the respective plural pieces of image data to processing for creating an electronic album, using the accessory information of the respective plural pieces of image data; an embedded information generation section that generates plural pieces of image identifications uniquely and respectively identifying the plural pieces of image data and that generates plural pieces of accessory information identifications uniquely and respectively identifying the plural pieces of accessory information; a third storage section that stores (i) a first location information table that stores the plural pieces of generated image identification in association with first location information indicating where the plural pieces of image data are stored in a first storage section and (ii) a second location information table that associates the plural pieces of generated accessory identification in association with second location information indicating where the plural pieces of accessory information are stored in a second storage section, the second location information is different from the first location information; an information addition section that reads out the plural pieces of image data, and generates and embeds, into each acquired image data read out from the first storage section, digital watermarks indicating the plural pieces of image identification and the plural pieces of accessory identification; an information addition section for embedding digital watermarks indicating the accessory information corresponding to each acquired image data into each acquired image data, wherein each accessory information includes location information for specifying a storage location of the image data corresponding to each accessory information; and an image output section for forming images on a recording medium based on the plural pieces of image data embedded with the digital watermarks, and outputting the recording medium as an index sheet; wherein the accessory information acquisition section acquires attribute information of the respective images included in the index sheet as the accessory information; and the accessory information processing section performs, as the processing, processing for making a determination as to whether or not the respective images included in the index sheet are to be included in the electronic album, based on the attribute information of the respective images before creating the electronic album.