PURPOSE: To shorten the following recognition time of a type character by settling the classification of font in an original picture in accordance with the recognition category outputted from a recognizing part and information for collation.

CONSTITUTION: A recognizing part 5 collates the recognition dictionary of a first font initially stored in a high-speed access storage part 6 with features of the character pattern extracted by a feature extracting part 4 and outputs the recognition category and information for collation to a recognition dictionary selecting part 7. A control part 9 repeats this processing with respect to one-row components of character patterns stored in a character pattern storage part 3 until collation with dictionaries of all fonts stored in a low-speed access storage part 8 is completed. When the processing is completed, a recognition dictionary selecting part 7 selects the recognition dictionary of an optimum font in accordance with the recognition category for each recognition dictionary and information for collation. The control part 9 stores the recognition dictionary of the reported font in the high-speed access storage part 6. Thus, the following collation time is shortened.