Spectrophotometric Measurement of Human Skin Colour

This article focuses on human skin colour. Three different colour measuring instruments were used: a tele-spectroradiometer, a de:8° and a 45°:0° spectrophotometers. They were used to measure 47 subjects who were divided into four skin groups: Chinese, Caucasian, South-Asian, and Dark. Eight locations for each subject were measured. The spectral reflectance results were first compared. They all showed the “W” shape between the 550 nm and 580 nm as found by the other studies. Those from the tele-spectroradiometer had an increase from 600 nm while the others were flatter. The colorimetric data calculated from the spectral measurements revealed similar patterns to describe the colour distribution of each skin group. It was found that two scales: whiteness-depth, and blackness-vividness could well describe these distributions. The results also showed systematic differences between the four ethnic groups, between eight body locations, between two genders, and between the measurements from the three instruments.