Abstract: Apparatus for the flexible recognition of subject structures in color and picture half-tone images incorporates a recognition system that can recognize general subject structures in a video image given arbitrary orientation. The signal of an opto-electronic image converter is supplied via an analog-to-digital converter to a digital hardware image pre-processor in which the momentary brightness value of the image scanning is processed with a preceeding logic result with the assistance of control information, and the new result is again stored. The reduced image data read out from the result memory at the end of an image pass can be interpreted in a job-specific way in an image processor.