IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD

This invention provides an image processing apparatus which simplifies the circuit arrangement required for edge emphasis correction. For this purpose, the apparatus has a first color conversion unit (102) for color-separating input image data into lightness data and chromaticity data, a delay unit (103) for delaying the separated lightness data by N lines, and delaying the chromaticity data by N/2 lines, an image edge amount extraction unit (113) for extracting an image edge portion from the lightness data, a saturation amount extraction unit (114) for extracting the saturation component from the chromaticity data, and an image edge emphasis amount distribution unit (116) for distributing the emphasis amount of the edge portion to an edge emphasis unit (104) so that the distribution ratio for chromaticity correction is higher than that for lightness correction when the saturation component extracted by the saturation extraction unit (114) is large, and the distribution ratio for lightness correction is higher than that for chromaticity correction when the saturation component extracted by the saturation extraction unit (114) is small.