An image processing apparatus includes: a first determination unit that determines whether each of an image regions is for a vector image; a color number counting unit that counts the number of colors in the pixels of high-resolution image data; a frequency counting unit that counts a number of times where the difference between the colors of each of the pixels in the high-resolution image data and the colors of at least one pixel located around each of those pixels is greater than or equal to a threshold; a second determination unit that determines that the image region is not an image region for a vector image; and a generation unit that generates image data in which a process for rendering images in the image regions determined by the first determination unit to be image regions for vector images is defined by numerical values or numerical formulas.