IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS, IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS, AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD

Disclosed are an image processing apparatus that can decrease such a misjudgment that an area including an extremely small-sized character is judged to be a halftone-dot area when a judgment of a halftone-dot area is performed based on a number of isolated pixels in a predetermined area, and an image forming apparatus that utilizes the image processing apparatus. An isolated pixel signal that is outputted from an isolated pixel detection unit and that indicates whether a target pixel corresponds to an isolated pixel is inputted into a filter processing unit. The filter processing unit corrects the isolated pixel signal based on whether the target pixel should be handled as an isolated pixel. A judgment is then performed as to whether an area including the target pixel is a halftone-dot area, based on a signal outputted from the filter processing unit.