a method of reducing noise in an image including steps for obtaining a first value for a target pixel , obtaining a respective second value for each neighboring pixel surrounding the target pixel and having the same color as the target pixel , for each neighboring pixel , comparing a difference between said first value and said second value to a threshold value , and replacing the first value with an average value obtained from the first value and at all second values from the neighboring pixels which have an associated difference which is less than or equal to the threshold value based on a result of the comparing step .