In image processing apparatus and method for displaying and printing a person image photographed by a digital camera, it is possible to automatically correct image data and output the person image of an optimum characteristic. In this apparatus, an image obtaining processor obtains the image data from a recording medium, a face region extraction processor extracts a face region of a person from the obtained image data, an image feature amount calculator calculates an image feature amount of the extracted face region, a correction effect inference processor infers whether or not a correction effect can be obtained by correcting a characteristic of the image data, based on the calculated image feature amount, and an image correction processor corrects the characteristic of the image data based on the image feature amount and thus outputs post-correction image data when it is inferred that the correction effect can be obtained.