1.  Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image correction of digital image. 
2.  Description of Prior Art
When digital image data received from a digital camera or the like are corrected, if a person is included in the image, the skin color has to be corrected accurately because skin color is a memory color.  In prior art image processing, skin area or person area is extracted generally by using color information.  For example, in the skin image recognition described in Japanese Patent laid open Publication 6-309433/1994, skin area candidates are searched from LHC data converted from RGB data, and a histogram on lightness is obtained.  Then, an indication on closeness to skin is calculated from the histogram, and skin areas are determined based on the indication.  In hand recognition described in Japanese Patent laid open Publication 7-105371/1995, a skin pixel is detected in an image of hand when color components of the pixel are within a predetermined range, and a skin area is extracted in the image of hand.  In skin area detection described in Japanese Patent laid open Publication 9-44670/1997, a histogram of hue converted from RGB data is obtained, and a face area is detected in a particular distribution range in the hue histogram.  In person detection apparatus described in Japanese Patent laid open Publication 9-50528/1997, a face area is searched in RGB data, and a person area is divided to mosaics to extract a face area. 
However, in the prior art image correction techniques, when skin color is extracted from the image and corrected, the image correction is performed on the entire image uniformly, and color correction is performed generally without limiting to skin.  Therefore, when an image includes a plurality of persons having different skin characteristics, it is difficult to perform appropriate correction for each skin.