A method of processing articles, in particular postal articles, which method consists in forming a first digital image of an article and in deriving from said first image a first image signature that is a unique identifier for said article, in forming a current digital image again for said article, and in deriving from the current image a current signature that is compared with first article image signatures that are recorded in a memory, for the purpose of pairing-off the image signatures on the basis of similarity. The method is characterized in that each signature is derived using the following steps: extracting a digital map of the luminance gradient field of said image by local planar regression; identifying in said digital map points of interest corresponding to topological singularities of the gradient field having high local circular convergence or high local circular divergence.