This invention provides a technique which allows more faithful color
reproduction by a relative simple arrangement. To this end, according to
this invention, by time-divisionally driving R, G, B, and E LEDs
respectively having dominant emission wavelengths of 630 nm, 525 nm, 470
nm, and 500 nm, a common monochrome line image sensor (102) scans a
document image. Scanned image data of respective color components undergo
correction equivalent to that attained by shifting the barycentric
positions of respective wavelength distributions so as to become closer
to the CIE-RGB sensitivity distributions.