Patent ID: 7187788

Claim:
A method for enhancing an appearance of a face located in a digital image, wherein the appearance includes one or more symmetrical features, said method comprising the steps of: (a) acquiring an original digital image containing one or more faces; (b) detecting a location of facial feature points in the one or more faces, said facial feature points including points identifying salient symmetrical features including one or more of skin, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, and hair; (c) using the location of the facial feature points to segment the face into different regions, said different regions including one or more of skin, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, neck and hair regions; (d) determining one or more facially relevant characteristics of the different regions; (e) based on the facially relevant characteristics of the different regions, selecting (1) one or more enhancement filters each customized especially for a particular region and (2) the default parameters for the enhancement filters; and (f) executing the enhancement filters on the particular regions in a proportional manner to account for symmetry between the facially relevant characteristics of the different regions, thereby producing an enhanced digital image from the original digital image.