Patent ID: 8040413

Claim:
A solid-state image pickup device comprising: a pixel unit in which W pixels, R pixels, G pixels, and B pixels are arranged in rows and columns two-dimensionally, the W pixels, R pixels, G pixels, and B pixels each having photoelectric conversion elements provided with a white (W) filter, a red (R) filter, a green (G) filter, and a blue (B) filter respectively and which outputs W signals, R signals, G signals, and B signals obtained by photoelectrically converting light incident on the W pixels, R pixels, G pixels, and B pixels; an edge detection unit which determines a specific area having a W pixel provided with a white (W) filter as a central pixel in the pixel unit, divides the specific area into a plurality of blocks including the central pixel, and detects edge information as to whether there is an edge of an image in each of the blocks, at least one of the blocks including the central pixel at an end of the block; a block select unit which selects a block with no edge from the edge information detected by the edge detection unit; a ratio calculating unit which calculates ratio coefficients of the R signals, G signals, and B signals from the block selected by the block select unit; and an RGB signal generator unit which generates a new R signal, G signal, and B signal from the W signal of the central pixel using the ratio coefficients calculated by the ratio calculating unit, wherein the ratio calculating unit calculates an additive average value obtained by adding an average value of each of the R signals, G signals, and B signals and the average value of each of the R signals, G signals, and B signals in the block selected by the block select unit to obtain the ratios of the average value of the R signals, the average value of G signals and the average value of B signals to the additive average value as the ratio coefficients.