—In this paper, a novel Chinese character localization method is proposed for texts in advertising images. To deal with the texts with gradient color, a color clustering method based on edge is introduced to separate the color image into homogeneous color layers. To solve the problem of locating characters varied in size, style and arranged in irregular direction, a novel character localization method is proposed, which integrates structure and CC-clustering to locate characters according to reliable features of characters. Finally, a new noise removal method based on stroke width histogram is employed to remove all non-characters connected components, and then all characters are located. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively locate characters in advertising images. Keywords-character localization; color clustering; connected component analysis