PURPOSE: To provide a picture reader capable of accurately specifying the picture position.

CONSTITUTION: In the picture reader which reads the original having the picture on different places by the type of document, a picture position recording part 1 which registers and records the picture position, document characteristic recording part 2 registers and stores the characteristic amount of the characteristic part specifying the type of document other than the picture position of the document, document type discrimination part 3 which discriminates the type of the document by comparing the characteristic recorded on the read picture data and the document characteristic recording part 2, and picture processing part 10 which binarizes or digitizes the read picture data based on the discrimination result of the part 3 at the output.