1. A digital image processing method for detecting human figures in a digital color image, comprising the steps of: providing a digital color image having pixels representing RGB values; segmenting the digital color image into non-overlapping regions of homogeneous color or texture; detecting candidate regions of human skin color; detecting candidate regions of human faces; and for each candidate face region, constructing a human figure by grouping regions in the vicinity of the face region according to a pre-defined graphical model of the human figure, giving priority to human skin color regions.