The voice recognition software interprets commands into shades of colour, enabling users to ask for commonly understood hues such as “carnation pink” or alter shades using phrases such as “make the sky a darker blue”. Typically, this would be defined by a colour expert who would have an esoteric knowledge of the co-ordinates within a three-dimensional colour gamut.

“Today, especially in the office environment, there are many non-experts who know how they would like colour to appear, but have no idea how to manipulate the colour to get what they want,” said Xerox Innovation Group principal scientist Geoffrey Woolfe. “You shouldn’t have to be a colour expert to make the sky a deeper blue or add a bit of yellow to a sunset.”

The benefits for the print and design industry are an easier means of communicating with customers.

A Xerox spokesperson told us: "We feel this technology could provide a better interface between Xerox customers, who are commercial printers and their customers who are trying to describe their colour preferences as lay-people. Generally the end user of a document or brochure is not a professional in specifying colour, so by providing a better human communication form, this will make the world easier for commercial printers."

“At Xerox, we’ve found that if you can connect the human dimension to the mathematical dimension, you get a lot of usability,” added Woolfe.

The technology was presented by Woolfe at the Inter-Society Colour Council's (ISCC) 2007 annual meeting.

The research is at a very early stage and the precise manner by which Xerox would apply it to its own product portfolio or license it to others has yet to be decided.

The spokesperson told us: "It is unknown at this time, whether that will be as stand alone software or perhaps a plug-in to existing colour editing packages. It could also be as a value added service for Xerox customers. The technology will probably be some type of device agnostic software."