A Foundation of Consistency

On drugstore shelves across the country, there are bottles and tubes of foundation makeup by dozens of brands in dozens of shades. Buying foundation in a drugstore is tough. For one thing, the bottles and tubes are sealed, and there\´s no tester, meaning women can\´t try the foundation on their own skin. The same shade can look vastly different on various skin tones, and it always looks different when it\´s dry instead of wet. On top of that, there\´s no industry-wide consistency when it comes to naming foundation shades; one brand\´s "neutral beige" or "warm honey" can vary considerably from another\´s. And it can be extremely difficult to tell similar shades apart. Trying to pick your best color can be a minefield. There are lots of places to go wrong.But what if a woman could take a cell phone picture of her face, send it to a group of experts, and get back a text message recommending just the right shade of foundation? This is what Bhatti started to wonder after a large cosmetics company approached HP Labs. Bhatti likes customer-oriented innovation projects and has a particular interest in applied mobile imaging, the use of cameras to understand and solve problems. It seemed like a perfect fit.