OBJECTIVE FACE RECOGNITION PROCESSOR FOR APPEARANCE INSPECTING APPARATUS

PURPOSE: To discriminate portions having different light reflectance characteristics such as a soldered portion and a non-soldered portion by producing a reference value for extracting a specific material part and separating from the soldered portion using the value. CONSTITUTION: A reference marker 41 is formed on a printed board 40 with an electronic part 10 soldered, while a copper foil is usually left as it is for easily recognizing a position. At the time of inspecting whether this soldered joint is good, the board 40 is positioned so that the marker 41 is in a field of view of an image input device, and the set position of the board 40 is recognized from an input marker image. Subsequently, with this recognized position as a reference, an image of a soldered joint whose positional relation with the marker 41 has been taught in advance is input sequentially for determining whether it is good. At this time, a brightness range of the copper foil is set form a brightness distribution of the marker image to produce a recognition reference value of the copper foil. Then an image obtained according to the soldered joint is checked, and a portion within the set range is separated as the copper foil. Thus the copper foil can be clearly discriminated from the soldered part allowing correct determination of a solder shape.