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.