In digital cameras, noise in the raw captured image significantly influences the potential color fidelity of the final processed image. This occurs because any amplification of the color values in an image, will also amplify the noise in the image. In order to control the visibility of noise in the final processed image, the camera designer is frequently forced to constrain the tuning of the color correction operation in a way that reduces the final color fidelity. By properly noise cleaning the original image data, the amount of noise in the input image to the color correction step can be greatly reduced. Consequently, the amount of noise in the output is also reduced. If the amount of noise in the color-corrected image is reduced well below the acceptable level, then more aggressive corrections can be achieved without unacceptably high amounts of noise appearing in the final processed image. These aggressive corrections can, in turn, be used to produce higher color fidelity in the finished image.