1. An image processing apparatus, comprising: an area extracting unit configured to extract halftone dot areas and character images in an image; and a table image detecting unit configured to detect the extracted halftone dot areas as a table image if (a) the extracted halftone dot areas include no ruled lines, (b) plural halftone dot areas among the extracted halftone dot areas are arrayed in a primary scanning direction and/or a secondary scanning direction, and (c) the arrayed plural halftone dot areas include the character images at at least two positions.