1. An image processing apparatus, comprising: a reduced image generating part generating a reduced image having a lower resolution than that of an original image, the original image being a digital image; a first extracting part distinctly extracting a first foreground image and a first background image from the reduced image; a first continuous tone converting part converting, into a continuous tone, a halftone dot pattern of the first background image extracted from the reduced image; and a combining part combining the first background image of which first background image the halftone dot pattern is converted into the continuous tone by said first continuous tone converting part and images based on the first foreground image extracted by said first extracting part.