1. An image coding apparatus comprising: a determination unit configured to divide input image data into image blocks each including a plurality of pixels, and to determine a characteristic of each image block; a filter configured to perform a filtering process on each image block in a locally decoded image associated with the input image data; and a control unit configured to control a property of the filter unit to perform a filtering process on image regions into which the image blocks are sorted according to characteristics of the image blocks determined by the determination unit.