PURPOSE: To obtain an excellent color reproduction characteristic by making calculation with weighting on prescribed input and output colors and by using a coefficient matrix thus obtained.

CONSTITUTION: An image processing element 39 comprises an interface 40 for a host receiving an input density digital information as an input, RAM 41 storing each element of a matrix for color correction, image information after a binary-coding processing, etc., ROM 42 storing a plurality of color sample data for determining each element of the matrix, CPU 43, etc. It prepares a duplication of a set of a desired input color digital information on the color sample data and a recording color information. In more detail, it prepares sets [Cin, Min, Yin], [Con, Mom, Yon] of data of (n) = 65 or more from sets [Ci, Mi, Yi], [Co, Mo, Yo] of data and sets of duplications. A weight value is determined by the number of these duplications. As for the data to be weighted, a flesh color being impressionable visually or a color of the highest histogram in a record image is selected automatically or by a keyboard. Subsequently, a coefficient matrix is determined by using the set of the weighted data. According to this method, it is possible to attain complete color correction, i.e. to output a desired record color.