Digital Image Colorimetry for Natural Dye and Pigment Color Quantification: A Systematic Review

Accurate color measurement is essential across analytical chemistry, food science, and textile technology, yet conventional instruments such as spectrophotometers remain costly and inaccessible for many researchers. Digital Image Colorimetry (DIC) has emerged as a low-cost alternative that uses digital cameras, scanners, or smartphones to quantify color through RGB or CIELAB values. This study presents a Systematic Literature Review following the PRISMA 2020 guideline to map the application of DIC specifically on natural dyes and pigments. Literature was retrieved from Scopus using combined keywords related to DIC and natural dyes and pigments, published between 2016 and 2026. From 107 initial records, 44 articles met the inclusion criteria after document-type and year filtering followed by title and abstract screening. Results show that DIC applications are dominated by chemical sensing and plant phenotyping, while textile dyeing applications account for only a small fraction, despite DIC consistently showing high validity against spectrophotometric methods across domains. This finding reveals a substantial research gap in DIC application for natural dye-based textile color evaluation.