A method for evaluating a color of a sample includes acquiring an image having a plurality of pixels from a sample and a plurality of pixels from known color calibration patches. The image is color calibrated using the known color patches to endow the pixels from the sample with the tristimulus values they would have under one or more known illuminants. The calibrated image is transmitted, together with metadata, to a remote location where further computations and an approval process are performed. The further computations include comparing all of the pixels in the image of a standard that are of a first color to all pixels of a second color in the similarly calibrated image of the sample, where the second color is a color in the image of the sample that is most similar to the first color from the image of the standard.