Image processing apparatus and image forming apparatus

摘要

Multi-value character (line image) data, characteristic information and half-tone data are stored while the memory is effectively used. Half-tone data is outputted from the attribute separating section 20. Vector pixels or the density data of 5 bits and the characteristic flag of 3 bits are outputted from the resolution converting section 12 and the edge detecting section 13. After a discriminating flag (1 bit) has been added to them by the data mixing section 21, they are formatted in a predetermined manner and stored in the memory M. In this case, both halftone data and vector pixels are stored as raster data of 9 bits. Further, the characteristic flag is stored as a portion of the vector pixels. Accordingly, the memory M is not wasted, and it is not necessary to separately provide a memory exclusively used for the characteristic flag.