Method and apparatus for filtering red and/or golden eye artifacts

Abstract

Processing method of a digital image to filter red and/or golden eye artifacts, the digital image comprising a plurality of pixel each comprising at least one digital value represented on a plurality of bits, the method comprising: a step of selecting at least one patch of pixels of the digital image comprising pixels potentially representative of a red and/or golden eye artifact; a step of classifying the at least one patch of pixels as 'eye' or 'non-eye'; a step of filtering said potentially representative pixels if said patch of pixels is classified as “eye”; wherein the classifying step comprises the operations of: converting the digital values of said patch of pixels into a Gray Code representation, overall obtaining a plurality of bit maps from said patch of pixels, each bit map being associated with a respective bit of said Gray Code; an operation of individually comparing said bit maps with corresponding bit map models belonging to a patch classifier produced by a statistical analysis of bit maps obtained by converting patches of pixels of digital images containing or not red and/or golden eye artifacts into said Gray Code representation.