A digital camera comprising: an image sensor adapted to capture a first image and a subsequent second image of a same scene using different exposure intervals; a storage device adapted to store the captured images; and a processing unit coupled to the storage device and adapted to enhance an underexposed one of the first and second captured images with luminance correction to provide a normally exposed high quality image, wherein the luminance correction comprises determining a spatial coherence and color statistics of the first and second images, wherein the processing unit is adapted to perform spatial region matching to determine the spatial coherence by: segmenting a blurred one of the first and second images into a plurality of similarly colored regions; eroding each of the regions; determining a number of iterations to completely erode each region; determining a region center for each of the regions; sorting the iteration numbers in descending order and selecting the first M regions as candidate regions for region matching; selecting the region centers of the candidate regions as pixel pairs from the first and second images in matching positions; and calculating a neighborhood value for each selected pixel, wherein the processing unit is further adapted to utilize the color statistics and spatial coherence as constraints for inferring a color mapping function between the two images to enhance the underexposed one of the first and second images. an image sensor adapted to capture a first image and a subsequent second image of a same scene using different exposure intervals; a storage device adapted to store the captured images; and a processing unit coupled to the storage device and adapted to enhance an underexposed one of the first and second captured images with luminance correction to provide a normally exposed high quality image, wherein the luminance correction comprises determining a spatial coherence and color statistics of the first and second images, wherein the processing unit is adapted to perform spatial region matching to determine the spatial coherence by: segmenting a blurred one of the first and second images into a plurality of similarly colored regions; eroding each of the regions; determining a number of iterations to completely erode each region; determining a region center for each of the regions; sorting the iteration numbers in descending order and selecting the first M regions as candidate regions for region matching; selecting the region centers of the candidate regions as pixel pairs from the first and second images in matching positions; and calculating a neighborhood value for each selected pixel, segmenting a blurred one of the first and second images into a plurality of similarly colored regions; eroding each of the regions; determining a number of iterations to completely erode each region; determining a region center for each of the regions; sorting the iteration numbers in descending order and selecting the first M regions as candidate regions for region matching; selecting the region centers of the candidate regions as pixel pairs from the first and second images in matching positions; and calculating a neighborhood value for each selected pixel, wherein the processing unit is further adapted to utilize the color statistics and spatial coherence as constraints for inferring a color mapping function between the two images to enhance the underexposed one of the first and second images. <EOS>