To provide an image processing device capable of outputting even black characters surrounded by a color ground having some extent of thickness distinctly and in image quality with suppressed blurs.

A color image processing device 1 comprises: a region separation processing part 6 for performing region separation processing which separates input image data into a plurality of regions including at least a character region; a color ground determining part 4 for determining whether or not a color ground exists in the input image data; and an input gradation correcting part 5 for removing the color ground from the input image data when the color ground determining part 4 determines that a color ground exists. The region separation processing part 6 performs region separation processing on the input image data from which the color ground has been removed by the input gradation correcting part 5.

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