To substantially reduce the entire time required for image and printing processings by omitting the image processing as much as possible and omitting an image data printing processing as much as possible as well when a white area is provided in images indicated by image data to be image-processed and printed.

An original is scanned and read in an image pickup element 101, digital conversion is performed in an A/D converter 102 and then, the white area of digital signals is judged in a white area judgement part 103. Then, at the time of judging the white area, a luminance density conversion processing and a masking processing performed when it is not the white area are not required and a density correction processing, a variable power processing and an error propagation processing are required similarly to the time of the white area. However, when an image level is '0' even in the result of the density correction processing, the need of the arithmetic operation of the variable power processing and the error propagation processing is eliminated, and by judging whether or not it is the white area beforehand, the respective processings can be omitted. Thus, the loads of the image processing are reduced.