To prevent an image from being tampered by enabling a third person to certify that a certification picture is a person concerned and to determine the expiration of the certification picture.

A photographing institution adds supplementary information including photographing permission information and photographing history information to picture data obtained by photographing a user by a photographing means permitted to be used for photographing by a photographing permission institution, stores the picture data into a data base, transmits the picture data to a user's personal computer through a network. The picture data are transmitted from the user's personal computer to an image using institution, which extracts the supplementary information from the transmitted picture data, requests the collation of the extracted supplementary information to the photographing institution through the network to certify the picture data.