Image pickup apparatus and method, recording medium, and program providing user selected hue and white balance settings

An image pickup apparatus comprising:

• an imaging element which converts light received from an object into an image signal;
• a signal processing circuit which processes the image signal;
• a display device that displays a multi-dimensional hue chart;
• and
• an operation setting device that enters user desired operation settings for the image pickup apparatus,
• wherein the color distribution of the image signal processed by the signal processing circuit on the basis of the operation settings input from the operation setting device is displayed on said multi-dimensional hue chart.

An image pickup apparatus comprising:

• an imaging element that converts light received from an object into an image signal;
• a signal processing circuit that processes the image signal;
• a display device that displays a setting screen showing tracing levels of white balancing selectable by a user;
• an achromatic color determining parameter setting device that sets achromatic color determining parameters for a tracing level selected by a user on the setting screen;
• and
• a white balancing device that performs white balancing on the image signal using the achromatic color determining parameters set by the achromatic color determining parameter setting device.

An image pickup method comprising:

• converting light received by an imaging element from an object into an image signal;
• processing the image signal;
• displaying a multi-dimensional hue chart;
• and
• inputting user desired settings for image processing of the image signal in the signal processing step, on the basis of said multi-dimensional hue chart displayed in said display step.

A display method for an image pickup apparatus, comprising:

• converting light received by an imaging element from an object into an image signal;
• processing the image signal;
• displaying an image on the basis of the image signal processed in the signal processing step;
• displaying a multi-dimensional hue chart,
• inputting user desired operational settings for operating the image pickup apparatus;
• and
• displaying an image having the color distribution of the image signal subjected to the signal processing in the signal processing step on said multi-dimensional hue chart in accordance with the operational settings.

An image pickup method comprising:

• converting light received by an imaging element from an object into an image signal;
• processing the image signal;
• displaying a setting screen that shows tracing levels of white balancing;
• selecting achromatic color determining parameters for the tracing level arbitrarily set by a user on the setting screen;
• and
• performing white balancing on the image signal using the achromatic color determining parameters set in the setting step.