PURPOSE: To attain sure and efficient picture reading by displaying a required designation area onto an original, extracting the original of the designated area from a picture of the original to be read by a picture reader and storing the picture data in a memory.

CONSTITUTION: A user designates a part for reading in an original in advance as a designation area by using a marker pen or the like. A picture read section 1 reads the original in which the area is designated. A designation area discrimination extraction section 2 automatically discriminates the designated area of the original designated in advance by the marker pen or the like with respect to the original read by the picture read section 1 and the original of the designated area is extracted as the picture data. Then only the original of the extracted designation area is stored in a memory. Thus, a picture data is read easily and surely to attain edition such as magnification of the picture data and insertion of a picture data into a text data is attained.