A system and method for providing color selection assistance and color auditing of an image. The continuous spectrum of colors can be narrowed to a subset of palettes of discrete colors, referred to as temperaments and environments, that facilitate selection of colors that provide a purposeful outcome. Each temperament/environment is associated with a plurality of different discrete colors and a plurality of different descriptive words, including but not limited to identity words and emotive words. The system and method enables the user to objectively transform a desired physiological response into a discrete set of colors from which to make a color selection where the presented colors are related to the desired physiological response or to audit an image to convert the palette of colors in the image to their associated temperaments.