An image processing apparatus includes: an interpreter processing part for creating intermediate data by analyzing a page description language; a rasterize processing part for creating RIP image data for each band for dividing each page into a plurality of parts, on the basis of the intermediate data; a characteristic value calculating part for calculating a characteristic value of RIP image data and associating the calculated characteristic value with the corresponding RIP image data; and an expansion processing part for, when the RIP image data whose characteristic value agrees with that of RIP image data that is a target for expansion are stored in a cache, reading out the RIP image data whose characteristic value agrees, the RIP image data being stored in the cache, and storing the RIP image data in an expansion memory.