1. A method for detecting subject matter regions in a digital color image having pixels of (red, green, blue) values, comprising the steps of: a) assigning to each pixel a belief value as belonging to the subject matter region based on color and texture features; b) forming spatially contiguous candidate subject matter regions by thresholding the belief values; c) analyzing the spatially contiguous regions based on one or more unique characteristics of the subject matter to determine the probability that a region belongs to the subject matter; and d) generating a map of detected subject matter regions and associated probability that the regions belongs to the subject matter.