a method for replacing defective pixels in a digital color image includes determining whether each pixel has defective data in a selected color channel ; for the pixel , determining whether a first reference color channel exists and , if so , correcting the defective data by defining a group of neighboring pixels ; for each of m neighboring pixels having non - defective data in the selected color channel and the reference color channel , computing a sum of the differences between the non - defective data in the selected color channel and the non - defective data in the first reference color channel ; adding the sum of the differences divided by m to the non - defective data value from the first reference color channel to obtain a result ; dividing the result by two to obtain a substitution data value ; and substituting the substitution data value for the defective data .