About Your Color Palette
A free color analysis that runs in your browser and shows its working, including where it is unsure. The method step by step is on how our color analysis works. This page is about how we check it.
By Ruslan ShchuchkinML engineer and data scientistUpdated
Our research
How accurate is color analysis from one photo?
We collected 422 celebrity press photos, each with a season the published sources agree on, and ran them through our analysis. From one photo it named the exact season 11.2% of the time and the right family 30.7% of the time, against 8% and 25% by guessing. We publish the weak numbers too.
Celebrity color analysis: do the experts agree?
We compiled 5,422 published season labels for 1,513 celebrities from 62 sites. Of the 795 celebrities that two or more sources name, only 59% get the same season everywhere. The dataset is free to reuse with credit.
Our tests
The lines between the 12 seasons are not eyeballed. We tuned them on faces that experts had labelled by season. Then we tested the method on 410 celebrity photos we collected ourselves, and every change to the method is checked against a fixed set of faces before it goes live. The code is covered by automated tests that pin each step, so a change that moves a result has to be made on purpose.
Our limits
- One photo is a first estimate. That is why the result always shows the runner-up and asks for photos in other light.
- Colored contacts, heavy makeup, a strong tan, dyed hair, unusual light and filters all move the reading.
- Draping in daylight with a trained analyst is still the most accurate method. It costs $150–$500, and if you want one, take one.
How we write
- Our encyclopedia pages cite only the 45 papers and books we checked. A claim with no checked source is cut.
- Every color, number and chart comes from our season dataset or our analysis, never typed by hand.
- Ruslan Shchuchkin writes the method, measurement and science pages. Jane Mitchell, certified color analyst, writes the style guides.
- The “Updated” date on a page is the date of its last real edit, not the date of the last build.
Your photo
It never leaves your device. There is no upload, no storage bucket and no third-party vision service. We host the face model ourselves, so running the analysis does not tell anyone else you are doing it. The photo is thrown away once it is measured. A small cut-out of your face stays in your browser until you close the tab, so your report can show it. Details on the privacy page.