An image data compression apparatus which compresses code data obtained by compressing
image data by a fixed length encoding method so as to reduce a scale of hardware
and reduce a development cost of software for an image data compression a binary
image data processing part processes binary image data in accordance with a run
length encoding method, the binary image data processing part including an encoding
part which encodes run lengths of the binary image data by an encoding part. A
multiple value image data processing part processes multiple value image data in
accordance with a prediction encoding method. The encoding part of the binary image
data processing part is commonly used by the multiple image data processing part
so that the encoding part compresses both the binary image data and the multiple
value image data.