Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Even if the color of the face and the makeup could be mastered, there’s still the challenge of lighting. Makeup that might look great in sharp office lighting but look very different in a dimly lit nightclub or a beach flooded in intense sun. The initial Daily Makeover product has no current way to address those kind of lighting differences.

Still, company officials argue that the need for something to bridge the gap was strong enough that it was worth it, even if the product was far from perfect.

Color Authenticity “is definitely an issue for the cosmetic industry” and marketers have to wrestle with the possible loss of color differentiation, Krygowski said. “Does the Web become too much of a leveling field for me? We’re never going to be dead-on across the board. For the brands, you have to sort of give that up to establish any sort of relationship” with the customer.

Dave Linn, the firm’s executive VP for technology, added that the technology has gotten a lot better in recent years. “Our monitors are becoming more true-to-life. Color profiles are becoming more standardized,” Linn said. “But that doesn’t solve the perception (issue). What is your backlighting? We don’t know the light quality of the photo when it was taken.”

So Linn’s team made some judgments about the typical monitor and settings their consumers were likely using. “We had to draw a line in the sand: These are the monitor settings that we’re going to use as a baseline,” Krygowski said.

The company is also preparing a smartphone version of their application, with one for the iPhone likely first out. On a phone, though, even more compromises have to be made, given the significantly smaller screen. “Our approach is that we’re not going to let you look at all of your face. (The smartphone screen is) way too small to make an impact. We’ll do individual parts of the face: a pair of lips, an eye,” Krygowski said.