1. A digital image acquisition system having no photographic film, comprising a portable apparatus for capturing digital images, a flash unit for providing illumination during image capture, and a red-eye filter for detecting red-eye phenomenon in a captured image based upon a comparison of said captured image and a reference image of nominally the same scene taken without flash, wherein the red eye filter further includes an alignment filter configured to align for aligning at least portions of the captured image and reference image prior to said comparison, and to match the pixel resolutions of the captured and reference images by up-sampling the preview image or sub-sampling the captured image, or a combination thereof, wherein the red eye filter detects said red-eye phenomenon by identifying a region in the captured image having a color indicative of a red-eye phenomenon and comparing said identified region with the corresponding region in the reference image, wherein the red eye filter further designates said region as indicative of a red-eye phenomenon if said corresponding region does not have a color indicative of a red-eye phenomenon.