Abstract: The apparatus and method of the present invention quickly determines the presence of contours in a digital color image by determining the busy and the non-busy (smooth) regions of the original digital color image and determining the luminance variations in the smooth regions of the original digital color image and in a quantized version of the original digital color image. The difference between the luminance variations is compared against a selected threshold value, which if exceeded causes a mark to be associated with the pixel under consideration. For each pixel of the quantized digital color image that is associated with the mark or has a mark associated with a neighboring pixel in a window around the pixel of interest the color of the pixel is selected to minimize and or remove the contour.