1. A method for reducing artifacts in an input image comprising the steps of: generating a variance image from the input image; partitioning the input image into a plurality of blocks of pixels; defining a set of classifications, the set of classifications including smooth, texture, and edge; assigning a particular classification to each block of pixels of the input image according to the variance image, to generate smooth blocks, texture blocks, and edge blocks; and applying a fuzzy filter to each pixel of each edge block.