IMAGE PROCESSING DEVICE, IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD, IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS, IMAGE READER, COMPUTER PROGRAM AND RECORDING MEDIUM

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image processing device, image processing method, image forming apparatus, image reader, computer program, and recording medium, effectively intensifying faint characters included in image data separated in a background region. SOLUTION: In an image processing device, a low-density character determining section 251 extracts, based on an inputted region identification signal, RGB signals in a background region from inputted RGB signals and detects whether a region including faint characters exists in the extracted RGB signals. A spatial frequency converting section 252 performs spatial frequency conversion upon the region of the faint characters detected by the low-density character determining section 251, and a spatial frequency analysis section 253 analyzes a resultant spatial frequency component and detects a frequency domain corresponding to the characters. An intensification-smoothing processing section 254 performs intensification processing upon the frequency domain corresponding to the characters detected by the spatial frequency analysis section 253, and a spatial frequency inverse converting section 255 performs spatial frequency inverse conversion, recovers image data and outputs them. COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT