1. An image processing apparatus that performs image processing on image data, comprising: a first identifying section identifying a user-specified region in the image data as an edit region; a second identifying section recognizing positions of individual characters in the image data; a generating section generating a character area for each of the characters whose positions have been identified by the second identifying section; a third identifying section identifying an edit character string based on candidate characters that are identified by determining the degree of overlay between the edit region and character region; and a processing unit performing image processing on the edit character string identified by the third identifying section.