A method of improving a digital color image having pixels, the method includes identifying pixels from the digital color image representing one or more sky regions; detecting sky occlusion regions by examining the sky regions; developing a model based on the identified sky pixels, wherein such model is a mathematical function that has inputs of pixel position and outputs of color; and using the model to operate on the digital color image to replace the values of pixels from the sky occlusion regions with values predicted by the model.