To provide an image processing apparatus that does not cause missing of characters in a case where a monochrome copy is made by reading a color original document even when the base and characters thereon have the same reflectance as long as they have different hues.An image processing apparatus of the invention includes a background color specifying portion 54D that specifies a background color using RGB signals outputted from a scanner portion 120, a hue determination portion 54C that determines the hue of a pixel of interest, and a monochrome signal generation processing portion 55 that generates a monochrome signal using any one of the RGB signals according to a specification result of the background color specifying portion and a determination result of the hue determination portion.