PURPOSE: To shadow a character without a specific hardware and an out-line font for processing the character.

CONSTITUTION: This method is constituted so that a full dot character is developped on a memory, and OR operation is performed shifting dot by dot in the direction of a specified shadow vector, and an exclusive OR operation is performed between an OR operated image and an original developed data, and a shadow area is calculated, and plotting is performed for the calculated shadow area by a specified internal form 4, and for the plotted result, in response to the line width of a specified shadow outer peripheral line segment, the OR operation is performed shifting by one dot at a time in the directions of top and bottom, left and right, and the exclusive OR operation is performed between the OR operation result and the original plotted result, and after a shadow outer peripheral line area is obtained, the internal form image, the shadow outer peripheral line plotted image and a character pattern before work are performed by the OR operation, and the character with shadow is generated.