An image pickup apparatus includes a color component acquiring unit that acquires picked-up-image color-component signals representing color components of a picked-up image, a face detecting unit that detects a face, a skin-color-region color-component acquiring unit that, when the picked-up image includes a face, acquires skin-color-region color-component signals based on a face detection result, a skin-color-eliminated-component-signal-information creating unit that creates skin-color-eliminated component-signal information obtained by eliminating the skin-color-region color-component signals, obtained by the skin-color-region color-component acquiring unit, from the picked-up-image color-component signals obtained by the color component acquiring unit, a white-balance-gain setting unit that sets a white balance gain by using the skin-color-eliminated component-signal information, and a white balance control unit that performs white balance adjustment of the color components of the picked-up image by using the white balance gain.