Apparatuses and methods for color matching and recommendations

A method comprising:

• irradiating a surface with a light source of a mobile device;
• acquiring an image of the irradiated surface;
• extracting a measured spectrum representative of a color of the surface from the image;
• correcting the measured spectrum, wherein correcting the measured spectrum comprises adjusting for ambient light influence on the measured spectrum to generate a corrected spectrum;
• comparing the corrected spectrum with a database of reference spectra to determine a spectrum of the reference spectra having a closest fit to the corrected spectrum;
• and
• providing a result based, at least in part, on the spectrum having the closest fit.

A device comprising:

• a light source, wherein the light source is configured to illuminate a surface;
• a camera configured to acquire an image of the surface;
• an interface configured to couple a spectrometer, wherein the spectrometer is configured to generate a measured spectrum from the surface;
• a processor configured to:
• analyze the measured spectrum to compensate for an influence of ambient light from the measured spectrum and generate a corrected spectrum;
• and
• a cloud computing device in communication with the processor comprising a database of reference spectra, wherein the cloud computing device is configured to:
• compare the corrected spectrum with the database of reference spectra to generate a result;
• and
• provide at least one of a product recommendation or a diagnosis based, at least in part, on the result.