PURPOSE: To obtain a character and symbol inspection apparatus in which a criterion of a blur is near a human sensation by roughly setting the blur limiting region of the protrusion of an inspection reference image as compared with that of a recess.

CONSTITUTION: When an inspection character image is fetched by a CCD camera 11, an image processing board 12 aligns the image based on a master image fetched from an image memory 14, and starts inspection of the shape of the character T to be inspected. A blur limiting region is added to the master image to be used for the reference of the inspection. A protruding enclosure is generated for the master image under the control of a CPU 13, the binary image of the master of the original image is drawn from the enclosure, and the recess of the character to be inspected is detected. Then, the background of the character to be inspected is divided into the two regions of the recess and the protrusion, more image expanding operation is executed for the protrusion of the character and the symbol of the inspection reference image as compared with the recess, and the blur limiting region of the protrusion of the reference image is roughly set as compared with that of the recess, thereby carrying out the inspection of the shape with the judging reference near human sensation.