Apparatus and method for measuring optical characteristics using a camera and a calibration chart imaged with the camera

A method for determining shade information, comprising:

• determining color information of an object, wherein the color information is determined by:
• generating data of the object with an image generation device having a field of view, wherein the object and a reference implement having one or more regions of predetermined optical properties are positioned in the field of view of the image generation device, wherein the reference implement is positioned near the object;
• generating data of the reference implement with the image generation device, wherein the reference implement includes a positional location attribute, wherein based on the positional location attribute a position of the one or more regions of predetermined optical properties of the reference implement in the field of view of the image generation device is determined by a processing system without operator identification of the position in the field of view of the image generation device;
• generating color information of the object by adjusting the data generated of the object based on the data generated of the reference implement;
• and
• determining shade information, wherein the color information is used to determine a closest match or matches of shade values, wherein data for the shade values are stored in memory accessed by the processing system.