To prevent occurrence of color blurring, when suppressing influence of mixed colors caused by a flare.

An image processing apparatus comprises: an image input unit which receives an image; a flare determination unit which determines whether a flare has occurred or not, on the basis of information on the area of a predetermined color component included in the image; a setting unit which, when the occurrence of a flare is determined, sets to a pixel included in the area of the predetermined color component caused by the flare at least, a weight based on a color component value of the pixel; and a smoothing unit which executes a smoothing process on the image on the basis of the weight set by the setting unit.