Does virtual color analysis work?

To look your most harmonious, it’s critical not only to match the shapes of your face to the shapes of your clothes—you also want to match the colors of your face to the colors of your clothes.

This is why I offer both virtual style analysis and virtual color analysis.

Some people may insist that virtual color analysis is either a scam or a well-meaning but ultimately impossible endeavor. They may argue, for instance, that a computer screen can’t accurately render the colors in the face.

I disagree with that reasoning—based on my observations, faces’ color seasons can be determined with reliable accuracy via virtual analysis.

The catch is that this is only true if the photo you’re typing fits specific criteria. I’ll go into what those criteria are below.

The basics of color season analysis

If you already know about color analysis and the 12 seasons, you can likely skip this section—it’s going to be a very basic overview—but for anyone who’s new to the concept, here’s a brief primer:

Color season analysis works by analyzing the colors present in people’s skin. Observation suggests that there’s four main color season categories—Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer.

Autumn appears faded and warm.

Winter appears bright and cool.

Spring appears bright and warm.

Summer appears faded and cool.

Further, each of those four seasons can be subdivided to account for the fact that some people are a pure season, and some people are a blend of two seasons.

For example, some people are purely Autumn—often referred to as “True Autumn.” But you can also be Autumn with some Winter influence—often referred to as “Dark Autumn.” The third type of Autumn it’s possible to be is Autumn with Summer influence, often called “Soft Autumn.”

This is true for Winter, Spring, and Summer, too—you can either be a pure version of each of those seasons, or a version with some influence of either of the adjacent seasons.

Future posts will explain more about the seasons, including which colors harmonize with each season, examples of celebrities in each season, and the seasons’ relationships to the style essences.

I’ve also started to type celebrities based on their color seasons. I’m working on typing many more. Part of why I’ve been slow to type them is that virtual color analysis of celebrities poses some big potential challenges.

The problem with virtual color analysis

Virtual style analysis is great, because photos accurately render the shapes of our faces. And even when there’s alterations, like if our nose looks larger in a selfie, these alterations aren’t typically enough to change our style type.

Virtual color analysis is trickier, because it’s easier for a photo to distort the colors of the face, depending on the lighting, and on whether we’re wearing face makeup that matches the true color of our skin.

If I have a digital image of a person in natural lighting, and that person isn’t wearing makeup that changes the colors of their skin, then my typing will be accurate. However, both of those conditions must be met to ensure accurate typing.

Some people argue that different colors look different on different computer monitors, which is true. But it becomes a non-issue when you’re typing someone’s color season, because I also use virtual color swatches, which I’ve verified to ensure they accurately represent each of the 12 seasons. So if my monitor is distorting your Bright Spring skin to look different from how it looks in real life, it will also be distorting my Bright Spring color swatches in a similar way. Thus, even if your skin doesn’t look exactly the same in real life as it looks on a computer screen, my typing will still accurately indicate your season.

This is true in theory, and also in reality—I even get the same results when I’ve experimented with typing people while using the computer program f.lux (which yellows your screen to emit light that’s less disruptive to your sleep patterns or something like that).

So virtual color analysis works for typing people when you can verify 1. that the photos were taken in natural lighting and 2. that the person isn’t wearing makeup that changes the color of their skin, as well as when you use accurate virtual color swatches on the same monitor on which you’re typing faces.

The big problem with celebrity color analysis

But virtual color analysis of celebrities is trickier because it’s hard to confirm with a celebrity that the allegedly “no makeup” photo the paparazzi snapped of them on their 8am coffee run is in fact makeup free, or that the lighting is as natural as it seems to read on screen.

I think my typings of celebrities’ color seasons are largely accurate. I search for photos where the celebrities don’t appear to be wearing makeup on their skin, in natural outdoor lighting, and I use the same systematic typing process I use for typing faces, which involves comparing a celebrity’s face to every single color season using process of elimination to rule out all possible seasons. I’ll never just look at a person and assume that I know their color season without using this rigorous typing process.

But I also acknowledge that celebrity color analysis has a lot more limitations than celebrity style analysis, which is part of why I focus more on style analysis.

Color analysis and style analysis do have fascinating relationships to one another. Like sometimes a person has a color season that seems to be opposite to their style type—for example, they have an intense style type like Romantic Dramatic but a calm color season like True Summer. Future posts will explore how to create harmony when your color season seems to clash with your style type.