What's science, and what's guidance

Color-analysis apps usually blur two very different things. TrueHue keeps them separate: it computes the parts that are rigorous, standardized science, and presents the rest as explainable guidance you can inspect and correct.

Rigorous colorimetry we compute this

• CIELAB (CIE 1976 L*a*b*), the perceptual color space defined by the International Commission on Illumination. Every extracted color is converted to Lab to reason about lightness, hue, and chroma.
• CIEDE2000 color difference (Sharma, Wu & Dalal, 2005), the canonical implementation. We use it to score how well a garment color fits your palette, instead of the older, perceptually uneven Euclidean distance.
• Skin colorimetry and the Individual Typology Angle (Chardon, Cretois & Hourseau, 1991), which classifies skin in Lab space. This is the basis for reading your depth and undertone from a measured color rather than a guess.

A design tradition we present as guidance

Seasonal color analysis, popularized by Carole Jackson in Color Me Beautiful (1980) and often traced to color theorists such as Johannes Itten, sorts people into four seasonal families from skin, hair, and eye color, undertone, and contrast. It is a consulting framework, not a peer-reviewed result: trained analysts can assign the same face to different seasons, and there is no ground-truth "correct" season.

How we stay honest about the difference

• We compute the measurable parts and show the reasoning behind the result.
• We present the seasonal mapping with a confidence rating and plain-language caveats.
• We say plainly that warm-versus-cool undertone from one photo is the least certain part, and we let you correct any extracted color, which re-runs the math instantly.

That is the whole idea: the guidance a $200 studio session sells, but with the measurement shown, the uncertainty disclosed, and the ability to correct it.

References

• Sharma, G., Wu, W., & Dalal, E. N. (2005). The CIEDE2000 color-difference formula. Color Research & Application, 30(1), 21-30. doi.org/10.1002/col.20070
• Chardon, A., Cretois, I., & Hourseau, C. (1991). Skin colour typology and suntanning pathways. International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 13(4), 191-208. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-2494.1991.tb00561.x
• CIE (2004). CIE 15: Colorimetry (3rd ed.). International Commission on Illumination. (Defines CIE 1976 L*a*b*.)
• Jackson, C. (1980). Color Me Beautiful. Ballantine Books.