To reduce communication cost, to improve performance and to suppress the deterioration of image quality.

A coding mode in a compression means 53 providing a highest efficiency, the image quality in an image processing means 56, and a watermark embedding mode in a watermark embedding means 55 are selected corresponding to the purpose and the priority of an opposite party to which information is transmitted. Thus, since the data transmission efficiency can be enhanced and the security of the file can be managed in this way, the effect leading to the reduction in the communication cost, improvement of the performance and suppression of image quality deterioration can be attained.