IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD, IMAGE PROCESSING DEVICE, AND RECORDING MEDIUM

An image processing method, image processing device and recording medium are provided in which the effects of erroneous extraction of a region assumed to correspond to a main portion within an image are mitigated. On the basis of image data of an image which is an object of processing, plural face candidate regions, which are assumed to correspond to faces of persons, are extracted. A degree of overlapping is computed for a pair of overlapping face candidate regions. A weight point is set for each face candidate region such that a weight point of a face candidate region which overlaps with another face candidate region is higher than a weight point of a face candidate region which does not overlap with another face candidate region, and the higher the degree of overlapping with another face candidate region, the higher the weight point. By comparing weight points of face candidate regions with a threshold value, a face region corresponding to a face of a person is extracted from the respective face candidate regions. A weighted average value, in which density values of the respective face candidate regions are weighted in accordance with degrees of overlapping, is computed as a face region density.