I am no beauty expert, but my girlfriend tells me that picking the right color shades for her cosmetics can be a daunting task.

Tens of colors and shades of makeup, numbers of names for same shades, different lighting conditions in each store and even similarly colored shades drying up differently in the end. Pick the right make-up and you are a beauty queen, pick wrong… One definitely needs a professional cosmetics consultant there

Or a cameraphone and HP.

Yep, HP Labs have just revealed their newest research project that could help you pick the right shade of cosmetics over the cellphone. Just snap a picture, send MMS message to HP server and a few seconds later you get an SMS with the recommendation of the shade that best matches your skin.

The system works with any kind of cameraphone. To adjust for lighting, color discrepancies, camera quality and the like, you have to hold small reference chart containing blocks of color with known color values.

After receiving MMS, HP imaging program finds your face, available makeup shades and the color reference chart in the picture and mathematically transforms the image to correct it.

Then it’s time to decide which color is best for you.

For that HP conducted a study where researchers asked makeup experts to recommend foundation colors for a large group of women they brought into HP Labs as reference models. These recommendations then became the basis of statistical processing program that is able to select the right shade of make-up for any skin.

Your picture is processed by this makeup selection engine, compared to the skin colors of reference models and recommendations for the best shades are provided.

And you happily leave the beauty shop with the makeup that is perfect for you face…

Source: HP Labs via Technology Review