PICTURE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD

A smoothing filter generates a smoothed picture by smoothing a brightness component of an input picture. An adjustment filter generates an adjusted picture by applying a filter to an area of the input picture. The filter has the same characteristic as the smoothing filter. The area has a brightness matched with a predetermined condition of noise detection. A contrast component calculation unit calculates a contrast component of the input picture by dividing each pixel value of the adjusted picture with a corresponding pixel value of the smoothed picture. An output picture generation unit generates an output picture by multiplying the smoothed picture with the contrast component.