A method for image processing involves collecting image data of a scene as electromagnetic radiation and processing the image data to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the image data. The image processing involves dividing a raw image that contains the image data into lines and columns, to create a raster image, superimposing a central raster filter element of a raster filter having an odd number of lines and an odd number of columns onto a raster image element, determining the brightness values of each of the raster image elements covered by the raster filter, wherein except for the central raster filter element, every other raster filter element has an individual light-reducing property, and adding up the brightness values to produce a total brightness value, and assigning this total brightness value to the raster image element covered by the central raster filter element. These image processing steps are repeated for all remaining raster image elements to produce a result image having the same resolution as the raw image from the total brightness values of the raster image elements.