1. A brightness-sensitive automatic white balance method, comprising: determining brightness of a scene captured in an electronic color image, the step of determining brightness comprising calculating a brightness metric for the electronic color image; selecting a color-weighting map based upon the brightness of the scene, the step of selecting comprising selecting the color-weighting map from a plurality of brightness-specific color-weighting maps respectively associated with different ranges of the brightness metric; extracting auto white balance parameters from the color-weighting map; and correcting color of the electronic color image, according to the auto white balance parameters, to generate a white balanced image; the plurality of brightness-specific color-weighting maps including: a low-brightness color-weighting map associated with the brightness metric being less than a first threshold, a moderate-brightness color-weighting map associated with the brightness metric being between the first threshold and a second threshold that is greater than the first threshold, and a high-brightness color-weighting map associated with the brightness metric being greater than the second threshold.