There are provided an image processing apparatus and method which can reliably and quickly prevent forgery. To accomplish this, an image processing apparatus includes a discrimination circuit (111) for discriminating using a plurality of different discrimination processes whether or not image data is a specific image, and a control circuit (112) for controlling the process of the image data in accordance with the discrimination result of the discrimination circuit. The discrimination circuit (111) has a digital watermark detection unit (111a) for discriminating whether or not specific digital watermark information is embedded in image data, and a feature extraction unit (112a) for discriminating similarity between the feature obtained from the image data, and that of a specific image which is set in advance. The presence/absence of execution of operations and execution order of the digital watermark detection unit and feature extraction unit are set.