An image processing apparatus includes signal extracting circuits (3, 4) for extracting charac­teristics respectively corresponding to character and photograph sections from an image signal, a decision circuit (5) for estimating the character or photograph section from the extracted characteristics, a selector circuit (6) for selecting threshold data for binarizing the character and photograph sections in accordance with an estimation result of the estimate circuit, and a binarizing circuit for binarizing of the image signal in accordance with the selected threshold data.