This invention provides a display control apparatus and control method, which allow the operator to easily identify the correspondence between the patch icons and their color difference values. To accomplish this, the display control method of this invention includes an icon displaying step of displaying a plurality of color difference values computed based on a first data group and second data group associated with spectral reflectance characteristics as a plurality of patch icons. The display control method includes a numeric value displaying step of displaying the color difference values represented by the patch icons in one of a first display format that displays, as numeric values, the color difference values within display regions of the patch icons, and a second display format that displays, as numeric values, the color difference values above display regions of a plurality of patch icons.