Image processing apparatus and image processing method, and image pickup element and image pickup apparatus

An image pickup element comprising:

• a sensor unit which generates an image signal of first color space;
• and
• a circuit unit which performs signal process on the image signal, wherein the circuit unit includes
• a color space converting unit which converts the image signal of the first color space into an image signal of second color space suitable for conversion into an image signal of third color space as specified, and
• a thinning processing unit which performs thinning process on the image signal of the second color space so as to correspond to a signal processing unit which generates image signals representing each color component from the image signal representing one color component of the color space for each pixel and outputs the image signal of the third color space, thereby generating the image signal representing one color component from the image signal representing each color component of the second color space for each pixel.

An image pickup apparatus comprising:

• an image pickup element;
• and
• a processor unit which performs signal process on an image signal output from the image pickup element,
• wherein the image pickup element includes
• a sensor unit which generates an image signal of first color space,
• a color space converting unit which converts the image signal of the first color space into an image signal of second color space which is suitable for conversion into an image signal of third color space as specified, and
• a thinning processing unit which performs thinning process on the image signal of the second color space so as to generate the image signals representing each color component from the image signal representing each color component of the second color space for each pixel, and
• the processor unit includes
• a demosaicing unit which generates the image signal representing each color component for each pixel from the image signal representing one color component of color space for each pixel, and
• a signal output unit which outputs the image signal generated by the demosaicing unit in the form of the third color space.