Patent ID: 7426300

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a histogram calculation section for calculating a histogram of an image; a highlight part detection section for detecting a highlight part from the histogram; a shadow part detection section for detecting a shadow part from the histogram; a γ curve production section for producing a γ curve by using a highlight γ value corresponding to the highlight part and a shadow γ value corresponding to the shadow part; and a density adjustment section for performing a density adjustment of the image based on the γ curve produced by the γ curve production section; and a storage section for storing a correspondence relationship between γ values and luminance values; wherein the γ curve production section reads the highlight γ value corresponding to a luminance value of the highlight part detected by the highlight part detection section, and the shadow γ value corresponding to a luminance value of the shadow part detected by the shadow part detection section, from the storage section; and wherein the γ curve production section produces a γ curve corresponding to the highlight part and a γ curve corresponding to the shadow part based on the two obtained γ values, and synthesizes the two γ curves with different weightings applied to the γ curve corresponding to the highlight part and the γ curve corresponding to the shadow part according to a luminance value at a time of synthesizing the two γ curves, so as to produce the γ curve based on which the density adjustment is performed by the density adjustment section.