Patent ID: 8655097

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving an input for selecting an area of an image that comprises a plurality of pixels and applying a filter to the selected image area, the selected image area is less than an entirety of the image, and the plurality of pixels in the selected image area includes one or more potential features; determining a detectability of the one or more potential features in the selected image area; based on the determined detectability of the one or more potential features in the selected image area, automatically determining a tolerance threshold for the selected image area such that the tolerance threshold is specific to the plurality of pixels in the selected image area; and applying the filter to the selected image area but not to unselected areas of the image to filter the plurality of pixels in the selected image area while preserving the one or more potential features that are detected according to the automatically determined tolerance threshold, application of the filter to the plurality of pixels in the selected image area being based in part on a color weight coefficient of each pixel, the color weight coefficient being determined according to a linear relationship of the tolerance threshold to a difference between a color channel for the respective pixel and a center pixel when the difference is less than the tolerance threshold.