1. A method for automatically determining the acceptability of an input digital image for a printing operation, said method comprising the steps of: (a) forming a low resolution analysis image from the input digital image; (b) detecting edge pixels representing edges in the low resolution analysis image; (c) obtaining an edge map of the edge pixels in the low resolution analysis image; (d) dividing the edge map into a plurality of blocks, where each block may contain edge pixels from the edge map; (e) identifying two or more blocks having the largest number of edge pixels; (f) obtaining from the input image two or more important areas in the input image that correspond to the two or more blocks identified in step (e); (g) calculating a salient acceptability feature based upon edge occurrence in each of the important areas; (h) calculating a statistical measure of edge occurrence from the salient acceptability features calculated in step (g); and (i) using the statistical measure of edge occurrence to determine the acceptability of the digital input image for printing.