To provide an image pickup device that can reduce the processing time by utilizing the fact that image data are an image photographed by a camera so as to simplify the image processing of an area with low importance.

The image pickup device includes an image pickup section that picks up an image, a sightline detection section that detects a gazes point by a photographer in a picked-up image, an importance calculation section that decides the importance of each area in the image picked-up by the image pickup section depending on the result of the sight line detection section, and a gradation number decision section that differentiates the gradation number of each area of the image depending on the result of the importance calculation section.