Color-unevenness inspection apparatus and method

A color-unevenness inspection apparatus comprising:

• an image pickup section to pick up an image of an inspection target in a color-unevenness inspection;
• an image generation section to generate an uneven-color image by, in the picked-up image of the inspection target obtained by the image pickup section, calculating a chroma in each unit region and identifying an uneven-color region based at least in part on a magnitude of the calculated chroma;
• a calculation section to calculate, for the uneven-color region in the uneven-color image, an evaluation parameter to be used in the color-unevenness inspection;
• and
• an inspection section to perform the color-unevenness inspection based at least in part on the calculated evaluation parameter,
• wherein the image generation section calculates the chroma, in each unit region of the picked-up image, while performing correction processing that reflects variations in color-unevenness visibility from color to color,
• wherein as the evaluation parameter, the color-unevenness inspection apparatus uses an uneven-color area ratio that is an area ratio of an uneven-color region to an entire region of the inspection target, and a maximum chroma in an entire region of the uneven-color region.