Patent ID: 7472910

Claim:
A sticker printing apparatus for printing a desired sticker by operating a touch panel overlaid on a display screen, comprising: storage means which has previously stored a plurality of candidate images for each of parts which forms a sticker, where the parts are each to be overlaid on each other in a fixed order, where at least one of the parts is to be combined with a character string and one of the parts is a background part of the sticker; parts determination means for determining, in a fixed order, one image for each of parts, by displaying a plurality of candidate images for a part to be determined on the screen and selecting one of displayed plurality of candidate images using the touch panel, and storing into a memory the selected candidate image as a determined part image corresponding to the part; generating means for, whenever a part image of a part layer is determined by said parts determination means, generating image data of a sticker in an intermediate step performed by said part determination means by laying out part images, having been determined by said parts determination means, stored in the memory in accordance with the fixed order and with predetermined positions assigned to each of the part layers, and displaying the generated image data on a predetermined area on the screen; edit means for, while said parts determination means and said generating means are operating, selecting a part to be edited in accordance with whether a user designates a previous part or a next part, and editing the selected part so as to re-select one of the plurality of candidate images of the selected part, where a plurality of parts are subjected to be edited; and output means for, when an output instruction is inputted by using the touch panel, outputting the image data of the sticker, obtained by said generating means, to printing means, wherein said parts determination means includes: discrimination means for discriminating whether or not a part of interest is to be combined with a character string; first storing means for, if said discrimination means discriminates that the part of interest is not to be combined with a character string, a selected candidate image as the determined part image for the part of interest into the memory; input means for, if said discrimination means discriminates that the part of interest is to be combined with a character string, inputting a character string using the touch panel; combining means for combining the selected candidate image with an image of the character string inputted by said input means; and second storing means for storing the candidate image combined by said combining means as the determined part image for the part of interest into the memory.