Devices, methods, and non-transitory program storage devices are disclosed herein to provide improved image processing, the techniques comprising: obtaining an input image and target image data, and then calculating derivatives for the target image data using a regularized derivative kernel operator. In some embodiments, the regularized operator may comprise the following operator: [−1 (1+ε)], wherein ε may be a controllable system parameter and preferably is independent of the particular type of image processing being applied to the image. In some embodiments, the techniques may find look-up table (LUT) mappings or analytical functions to approximate the derivative structure of the target image data. Finally, the techniques disclosed herein may generate an output image from the input image based on attempting to closely approximate the calculated derivatives for the target image data. In preferred embodiments, by controlling the mapping, e.g., using regularization techniques, halos and other image artifacts may be ameliorated.