1. A digital image processing method for detecting facial features in a digital image, comprising the steps of: detecting iris pixels; clustering the iris pixels; selecting at least one of the following methods to identify eye positions in an image: i) applying geometric reasoning to detect eye positions using the iris pixel clusters; ii) applying a summation of squared difference method to detect eye positions based upon the iris pixel clusters; and, iii) applying a summation of squared difference method to detect eye positions from the pixels in the image; wherein the method applied is selected on the basis of the number of iris pixel clusters; and locating facial features using identified eye positions.