A picture combining apparatus that automatically displays a picture important to a user, and moreover displays that important picture combined in a screen configuration that is highly appealing visually. In this apparatus, a picture input section 102 inputs images making up a picture on an image-by-image basis, and a picture accumulation section 110 accumulates input pictures. A trigger generation section 104 that generates a trigger indicating the importance of a picture, and a combining trigger calculation section 106 calculates a combining trigger for calculating screen combining parameters using that trigger. A screen configuration calculation section 108 determines the presence or absence of screen combining using a combining trigger and calculates a screen configuration (more specifically, screen combining parameters). A sub image creation section 112 creates an image (sub image) to be used in combination with an input image (main image), and an image information adding section 114 adds image information of a sub image to that sub image. A screen combining section 116 combines a plurality of images (main and sub images) in one screen.