Patent ID: 8363123

Claim:
An image pickup apparatus comprising: an image sensing device including a color filter having pixels of a plurality of different colors arranged in a predetermined order, the image sensing device receiving an image of a subject and outputting an image signal; and demosaic processing means for generating color signals for each pixel of the image based on the image signal, which is received from the image sensing device, wherein the demosaic processing means includes a generation unit, a color difference interpolation unit, and a noise reduction unit, the generation unit performs computation using an interpolated signal representing a predetermined target color included in the image signal received from the image sensing device so as to generate a color-related signal for a pixel of the predetermined target color, that associates the interpolated signal and a signal corresponding to a second predetermined color that is different from the predetermined target color, the noise reduction unit performs a noise reduction process on the color-related signal generated by the generation unit such that a related color noise characteristic is the same as that of the image signal received from the image sensing device, and the color difference interpolation unit interpolates the noise-reduced signal after the noise reduction process is performed.