1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image processing of moving pictures, in particular to flicker correction thereof.
2. Description of Prior Art
A moving picture picked up by a digital camera or the like may include flicker under some imaging conditions. Flicker is a phenomenon wherein brightness or the like in a moving picture is changed periodically because the frequency of illumination is not synchronous with the frame rate of the moving picture.
A moving picture is subjected to various image processing such as fog correction. It is desirable that flicker can be corrected automatically. In an image processor described in Japanese Patent laid open Publication 2000-324365, data used for flicker correction is determined based on a difference of an average of pixel data of a current input picture obtained relatively to reference picture data, or an average of pixel data of pictures of some previous frames. The image data is corrected simply with reference to the difference of the average, but it is desirable to improve the preciseness of the flicker correction.