Patent ID: 8014627

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an image-information acquiring unit to acquire image information; an image-component separating unit to separate the image information acquired by the image-information acquiring unit into luminance information and color information; a luminance-noise removing unit to remove noise from the luminance information by using a first noise removing method, wherein the luminance-noise removing unit uses, as the first noise removing method, a luminance filter that removes noise associated with the luminance information; a color-noise removing unit to remove noise from the color information by using a second noise removing method different from the first noise removing method, wherein the color-noise removing unit uses, as the second noise removing method, a color filter that removes noise associated with the color information; a filter-size storing unit to store therein a table showing association among imaging conditions indicating an imaging state at the time of imaging of the image information, filter sizes of the luminance filter, and filter sizes of the color filter, wherein the filter size of the color filter is set to be larger than the size of the luminance filter; and an imaging-condition acquiring unit to acquire the imaging conditions, wherein the luminance-noise removing unit specifies, by referring to the table stored in the filter-size storing unit, a filter size of the luminance filter associated with the imaging conditions, which are acquired by the imaging-condition acquiring unit, and removes noise using the luminance filter of specified filter size, and the color-noise removing unit specifies, by referring to the table stored in the filter-size storing unit, a filter size of the color filter associated with the imaging conditions, which are acquired by the imaging-condition acquiring unit, and removes noise using the color filter of specified filter size.