Abstract: An image area discrimination apparatus for discriminating a text area and a screen dot area from an image containing text mixed with a picture, has a block-by-block image area discriminator which receives an image signal to discriminate an image area of the received image signal on a block-by-block basis, a text area detector which receives a first output of the block-by-block image area discriminator to discriminate a text area, a screen dot area detector which receives a second output of the block-by-block image area discriminator to discriminate a screen dot area, and a final discriminator which receives outputs of the text area detector and the screen dot area detector, to discriminate an image area block by block. Accordingly, the text is separated from the picture, to suppress the moire effect of a screen-dot-printed picture.