IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD

In order to acquire a good binary image at all levels of gray scale, an image processing apparatus for quantizing input multivalued image data by a multivalued error diffusion method, selecting a predetermined dot pattern based on the quantized image data and outputting a binary image is configured to have an error calculation division for calculating corrected value from a pixel value and a processed pixel diffusion error of an input image, and calculating a quantization error from an output density level corresponding to the corrected value, an image generation division for first acquiring a diffusion coefficient corresponding to a pixel value of the input image, and distributing the quantization error to surrounding pixels according to a weight assignment by the diffusion coefficient to generate the binary image, a diffusion coefficient generation division for generating a plurality of candidate diffusion coefficients, a computing division for acquiring an evaluation value for the binary image generated by the image generation division, and a selection division for selecting the diffusion coefficient corresponding to the pixel value of the input image from the plurality of candidate diffusion coefficients based on the above evaluation value.