There is disclosed an image processing apparatus developed considering that an embedding or extracting method has not heretofore been changed based on a spatial coordinate on a recording medium or reading device, the apparatus comprising: an input unit for inputting an image, an embedding unit for embedding predetermined information to the inputted image by a predetermined embedding method, an image formation unit for forming the image to which the predetermined information is embedded on the recording medium, and a changeover unit for changing the embedding method by the embedding unit based on the spatial coordinate of the recording medium.