This paper presents a cost-effective image sharpening solution suitable for single-sensor digital cameras. The proposed solution enhances the structural content of the sensor image data captured using a Bayer color filter array (CFA). Subsequent demosaicking of the enhanced CFA image produces a visually-pleasing demosaicked image without the need for expensive sharpening in the RGB color domain. Simulation studies indicate that the proposed imaging pipeline, which employs an image sharpening step before the actual demosaikcking module, yields excellent performance and outperforms the conventional pipeline (demosaicking followed by full-color image sharpening) in terms of both subjective and objective image quality measures.