An apparatus for and method of performing a most informative feature extraction (MIFE) method in which a facial image is separated into sub-regions, and each sub-region makes individual contribution for performing facial recognition. Specifically, each sub-region is subjected to a sub-region based adaptive gamma (SadaGamma) correction or sub-region based histogram equalization (SHE) in order to account for different illuminations and expressions. A set of reference images is also divided into sub-regions and subjected to the SadaGamma correction or SHE. A comparison is made between the each corrected sub-region and each corresponding sub-region of the reference images. Based upon the comparisons made individually for the sub-regions of the facial image, one of the stored reference images having the greatest correspondence is chosen. While usable individually, using the MIFE and/or SadaGamma correction or SHE together achieves a lower error ratio in face recognition under different expressions, illuminations and occlusions.