NOISE REDUCTION METHOD UTILIZING COLOR INFORMATION, APPARATUS, AND PROGRAM FOR DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING

A digital image processing method for reducing the noise of a color digital image having pixel values, includes the steps of: identifying one or more color regions in color space; identifying a pixel of interest in the color digital image; calculating a color weighting factor for the pixel of interest; using the color weighting factor and the values of pixels sampled from a local neighborhood of pixels about the pixel of interest to calculate a noise reduced pixel value; replacing the original value of the pixel of interest with the noise reduced pixel value; and repeating the steps for other pixels in the digital image.