Patent ID: 7505176

Claim:
An image processing apparatus that executes an image process for input image data, a number of gray levels of the input image data being a first number, comprising: an attribute analysis section that analyzes an attribute of the image data; a bit number increasing section that outputs bit-increased image data which has a second number of gray levels, the second number being greater than the first number; halftoning process sections associated with a plurality of attributes, which execute multi-value halftoning processes in accordance with attributes that are analyzed by the attribute analysis section, at least one of the halftoning process sections applying one of the multi-value halftoning processes to the bit-increased image data, the other one of the halftoning process sections applying the other one of the multi-value halftoning processes to the input image data; a switching section that outputs at least one of the outputs from the halftoning process sections according to the attribute analyzed by the attribute analysis section; a coding section that encodes an output from the switching section; a memory section that stores the image data that is encoded by the coding section; and a decoding section that decodes the image data that is stored in the memory section.