7. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said deciding means, in a case where the discriminated orientations agree in a plurality of characters whose orientations have been discriminated by said character orientation discriminating means to a predetermined reliability or higher, further decides upon this orientation as the orientation of the document image data.
7. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said deciding means, in a case where the discriminated orientations agree in a plurality of characters whose orientations have been discriminated by said character orientation discriminating means to a predetermined reliability or higher, further decides upon this orientation as the orientation of the document image data. 8. The apparatus according to claim 7, wherein said predetermined reliability or higher is that for which the maximum value of degree of character recognition from a plurality of directions, performed on said plurality of characters, was obtained.