There is provided an image processing apparatus and method that make it possible to suppress degradation of the encoding efficiency. In the case where primary transform that is a transform process for a prediction residual that is a difference between an image and a prediction image of the image is to be skipped, also secondary transform, which is a transform process for a primary transform coefficient obtained by the primary transform of the prediction residual, is skipped. The present disclosure can be applied, for example, to an image processing apparatus, an image encoding apparatus, an image decoding apparatus and so forth.