Methods and systems for denoising a digital image are provided. The method includes determining first and second plurality of pixel patches including respective first (p) and second (q) pixels, determining a patch distance between each pair of corresponding pixel patches in the first plurality and the second plurality of pixel patches, determining an effective distance between the first pixel (p) and the second pixel (q), repeating the above steps for the same first pixel (p) and another second pixel (q) until a predetermined number of pixels (q) in the raw digital image is processed, and then denoising the first pixel (p), including determining respective contributions of the pixels (q) into a noise reduction of the pixel (p), using respective effective distances of the pixels (q). A corresponding system is also provided. Embodiments of the invention provide computational advantages for denoising digital images.