This article presents an overview of image denoising algorithms ranging from wavelet shrinkage to patch‐based nonlocal processing. The focus is on the suppression of additive Gaussian noise (white and colored). A great attention is devoted to explaining the main underlying ideas and concepts of representative approaches, complemented by illustrative examples, accessible also to nonexperts in the field. A Bayesian perspective of wavelet shrinkage is given, with different instances of spatial context modeling (including local spatial activity indicators, Markov random fields, hidden Markov tree models, and Gaussian scale mixture models). Extensions to other transform domains (curvelets and other generalizations of wavelets) are addressed too, showing the benefits in terms of image quality. Patch‐based image denoising is illustrated with principles of nonlocal means filtering and collaborative filtering, explaining also the connections with dictionary learning. Some general notes on the performance comparison are given, by summarizing the benefits and limitations of various approaches against each other, and pointing to some of the current trends in the field.