IMAGE PICKUP APPARATUS AND IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD RESTRICTING AN IMAGE STABILIZATION RANGE DURING A LIVE VIEW OPERATION

An image pickup apparatus includes: an IS unit that corrects blurring during exposure by driving a lens or an image pickup device based on a blur amount detected by a blur detecting unit; an alignment processing section that calculates a correlation value for arbitrary two images among image data of a plural images obtained by consecutive photographing; a combination processing section that aligns and combines image data of the two images based on the correlation value; and a microcomputer that is capable of setting a consecutive photographing combination mode. In a case where the consecutive photographing combination mode is set, the IS unit restricts an image stabilization range during live view.