There are provided an image processing method and image processing apparatus, which can suitably access a necessary partial image, and can suppress wasteful data transfer by returning data with a small number of tiles for a thumbnail image of a low resolution or the like so as to reduce the number of times of file seek operations, and returning data with a large number of tiles for an image of a high resolution to be returned in response to an enlargement request. To this end, a server encoded data fragmentarily transmits encoded data which is hierarchically encoded by dividing an image into a plurality of tiles in response to a request from a client. The server calculates an occupation ratio of the displayed area of the image requested from the client to the entire image. When the ratio is equal to or lower than a threshold, the server selects encoded data divided to have a larger number of tiles. Otherwise, the server selects encoded data with a smaller number of tiles. The server extracts data corresponding to the displayed area from the selected encoded data, and transmits the extracted data to the client.