In this work we introduce a novel operator $$\displaystyle \varDelta _(p,q)$$ as an extended family of operators that generalize the p-Laplace operator. The operator is derived with an emphasis on image processing applications, and particularly, with a focus on image denoising applications. We propose a non-linear transition function, coupling p and q, which yields a non-linear filtering scheme analogous to adaptive spatially dependent total variation and linear filtering. Well-posedness of the final parabolic PDE is established via pertubation theory and connection to classical results in functional analysis. Numerical results demonstrates the applicability of the novel operator $$\displaystyle \varDelta _(p,q)$$ .