Disclosed are an apparatus and method to improve clarity of images, which can prevent the degradation of the clarity of a display unit caused by deterioration of a contrast characteristic. The apparatus includes: an artifact reducing unit determining a representative color of one of the images and moving a color of an edge as the determined representative color; a filter extracting a high frequency component of the image; and a sharpness enhancement unit improving the clarity of the image having the color of the edge moved and the filtered high frequency component.