Patent ID: 7903898

Claim:
A visual processing apparatus comprising: a spatial processing portion operable to output surrounding image information obtained from pixel values of an input image signal and pixel values of input image signals surrounding the input image signal; a visual processing portion operable to perform visual processing on the input image signal based on the input image signal and the surrounding image information output by the spatial processing portion; a control signal generation portion operable to generate and output an effect adjustment signal for adjusting an effect of the visual processing performed by the visual processing portion; and an effect adjustment portion operable to adjust the effect of the visual processing performed by the visual processing portion according to the effect adjustment signal, wherein the visual processing portion performs the visual processing so as to adjust a local contrast of the input image signal, the local contrast being adjusted based on the input image signal and the surrounding image information output by the spatial processing portion, and wherein the control signal generation portion (i) determines a presence of an edge proximal region and a flat region in an image region of an image formed by the input image signal, (ii) generates the effect adjustment signal so as to adjust the effect of the visual processing performed by the visual processing portion, which is based on the input image signal and the surrounding image information, on an image region determined by the control signal generation portion not to be the edge proximal region or the flat region, and (iii) generates the effect adjustment signal so as to adjust the effect of the visual processing performed by the visual processing portion to be weaker than the effect of the visual processing performed by the visual processing portion based on the input image signal and the surrounding image information, on an image region determined to be the edge proximal region and the flat region.