1. A digital camera for capturing images, the camera comprising: an optical system which forms an object image; an image pick-up device which receives the object image and outputs an image signal corresponding to the received object image; a filtering system which receives and processes the image signal so that a smoothing effect is applied to at least a portion of the object image, said filtering system calculating moving averages of pixel data in the image; the filtering system being configured to select a focused area which is in a focused condition, and to process the image signal such that the smoothing effect resulting from a degree of defocus changes gradually in accordance with a distance from the focused area; a filter control system which is configured to change characteristics of said filtering system, in accordance with a distance between a first position, which lies in the image, and a second position at which the moving average is calculated, and an automatic focusing system which drives said optical system to perform focusing, said automatic focusing system having at least one AF area in which said optical system focuses on the object, and said automatic focusing system being configured to manually or automatically select one of the at least one AF area, wherein the first position corresponds to the one of the at least one AF area manually or automatically selected by the automatic focusing system, and wherein the rate of a change of the degree of smoothness of the image in a lateral direction of the image is different from the rate of a change of the degree of smoothness of the image in a vertical direction of the image.