Embodiments of the present invention provide an image processing method and apparatus, where the method includes: determining a Gaussian mixture model of a first area in a first image, where the first area belongs to a background area of the first image, and the first image is a first frame of image in a video; determining a distance from a first pixel in a second image to the Gaussian mixture model; and when the distance from the first pixel to the Gaussian mixture model is less than or equal to a first preset threshold, determining that the first pixel belongs to a background area of the second image. In the embodiments of the present invention, an area to which a pixel belongs can be directly determined according to a distance from the pixel to a Gaussian mixture model, so that image foreground segmentation can be completed efficiently.