Patent ID: 8111302

Claim:
A white balance control apparatus comprising: an evaluation acquisition unit acquiring color signal values at a plurality of pixel positions from image data; a chromaticity value calculation unit calculating chromaticity values corresponding to the pixel positions from the color signal values; a weight coefficient calculation unit extracting a signal value expressing a lightness component of the color signal values as a lightness value, and calculating a weight coefficient determined by the lightness value with respect to the pixel positions; a histogram analysis unit calculating the center position of a histogram, a histogram multiplication value at a neighborhood interval of the center position and a histogram dispersion value or color temperature with respect to a chromaticity space weighting histogram calculated based on a chromaticity value and a weight coefficient at each of the pixel positions; an appearance at a light source calculation unit calculating an appearance at a light source for each color temperature based on the histogram multiplication value and the histogram dispersion value; a white balance coefficient calculation unit calculating a white balance coefficient based on the appearance at a light source for each color temperature and the histogram center position for each color temperature; and a white balance operating unit executing a white balance operation with respect to the image data using a white balance coefficient calculated by the white balance coefficient calculation unit.