1. An image processing apparatus comprising: an image input device for accepting input of applied image data; a color bleed determining device for determining whether a pixel of interest in the image data exhibits color bleed; a luminance monotonic decrease direction discriminating device for discriminating, in a case where said color bleed determining device has determined that the pixel of interest exhibits color bleed, a direction in which luminance is monotonically decreasing, using the pixel of interest as a starting point, in the neighborhood of the pixel of interest; a luminance monotonic decrease end pixel search device for finding a pixel, at which the monotonic decrease in luminance ends, in the direction in which luminance is monotonically decreasing discriminated by said luminance monotonic decrease direction discriminating device; a target pixel deciding device for deciding upon the luminance monotonic decrease end pixel, which has been found by said luminance monotonic decrease end pixel search device, as a target pixel; a color correction value calculating device for calculating a correction value that causes color of the pixel of interest to match the color of the target pixel decided by said target pixel deciding device; and a color correcting device for correcting the color of the pixel of interest using the color correction value calculated by said color correction value calculating device.