IMAGE CODING APPARATUS AND IMAGE DECODING APPARATUS AND THEIR CONTROL METHODS, AND COMPUTER PROGRAM AND COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM

An image coding apparatus for efficient coding on image data having discrete pixel values such as a CG image or a limited color image as well as a natural image where pixel value changes are mild. For this purpose, a tile dividing unit divides multi-valued image data into tiles. An occurred level count unit outputs the result of counting of the number of brightness values in the tile to a comparison unit and outputs the existing brightness values to an index table generation unit. The index table generation unit allocates continuous index values to the existing brightness values, and stores the result of allocation into an index memory table. An index conversion unit replaces the input pixel values in the tile with index values, and outputs the index values to a selector. The selector selects one of the brightness values in the tile or the index values based on the result of comparison by the comparison unit, and outputs the selected values to a tile data predictive coding unit so as to perform predictive coding processing.