A measuring apparatus that measures an optical characteristic of a surface in accordance with a standard selected from a plurality of standards is provided. The apparatus includes an illumination device configured to illuminate the surface with light from a light source, an imaging device configured to image the light source with reflected light from the surface illuminated by the illumination device, and a processor configured to process image data having number of pixels obtained by reducing number of pixels of the imaging device by a reduction rate to obtain the optical characteristic of the surface. The processor is configured to determine the reduction rate based on the selected standard.