Patent ID: 8134729

Claim:
An image transfer system comprising: an image forming apparatus for forming an image; and an external equipment communicably connected to the image forming apparatus, wherein the image forming apparatus includes: a document reading section for reading a document; an area extracting section for separating and extracting a plurality of image areas from a document image read by the document reading section; a digital signature providing section for providing sender's digital signatures respectively to the image areas extracted by the area extracting section in accordance with degrees of secrecy of the image areas; an image file creating section for creating an image file including a plurality of image areas provided with the sender's digital signatures by the digital signature providing section; a digital signature creating section for creating a receiver's digital signatures; and a sending section for sending the image file created by the image file creating section together with the created receiver's digital signatures when the receiver's digital signals are created by the digital signature creating section, and the external equipment includes: a receiving section for receiving the image file and the receiver's digital signatures sent by the sending section; a digital signature acquiring section for acquiring the receiver's digital signatures for restricting image areas to be presented to a user from among the plurality of image areas; a digital signature storage section for storing the receiver's digital signatures; an image area selecting section for selecting image areas to be presented to the user from among the plurality of image areas in accordance with the sender's digital signatures provided respectively to the plurality of image areas included in the image file received by the receiving section and the receiver's digital signatures acquired by the digital signature acquiring section; and an output section for outputting image areas selected by the image area selecting section, and the digital signature acquiring section acquires the received receiver's digital signatures when the receiving section receives the receiver's digital signatures, and the digital signature acquiring section acquires the receiver's digital signatures stored in the digital signature storage section when the receiving section does not receive the receiver's digital signatures.