1. A method for processing a sparsely populated color digital image having colored pixels to produce a fully populated and noise clean color image, comprising: noise cleaning the colored pixels in the sparsely populated color digital image by providing a noise cleaning kernel for each color in the sparsely populated image and calculating noise cleaned pixel values by averaging selected kernel pixel values based on the kernel pixel values and the pixel value of the pixel to be cleaned of the kernel respectively to produce a noise clean sparsely populated color digital image; and interpolating the noise clean sparsely populated image for producing color pixels with appropriate values missing from the sparsely populated color digital image by interpolating the color values for missing pixels from neighboring color pixels.