To provide an image processing method for discriminating a character area needing smoothing processing and an image area requiring gradation expression so as to executing ON/OFF of a smoothing processing function.

In the case that surrounding pixels adjacent to a target pixel of an image area in bit map shaped image data including pixels with multi-value gradations keep the same color information consecutively for three pixels or over, smoothing processing is applied to the target pixel, and in the case that the surrounding pixels adjacent to the target pixel keep the same color information that is not consecutive, no smoothing processing is applied to the target pixel.