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The technology interprets commands such as 'make the sky a deeper blue' or 'make the background carnation pink' and prompts its software to make the necessary change does the work. The invention creates 'colour language' by translating human descriptions of colour into the precise numerical codes that machines use to print colour documents.

Geoffrey Woolfe, the principal scientist in the Xerox Innovation Group that is working on the technology, believes that colour adjustments could soon be made on devices like colour office printers and commercial presses without having to deal with the mathematics.

'Today, especially in the

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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,' he said. '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.'

Woolfe focused his research on common human descriptions of colour, finding common words used to distinguish different shades and colours could be mapped to the technical language of colour created by engineers.

While the technology is still at an early stage, he believes it will eventually be possible to 'tell' a computer to 'punch up the purple' in a bouquet of flowers or tell office printers could be commanded to print colours a certain way ('when printing green, make it more of a teal green'). It would also have many uses in digital printing, making it easier for print providers to communicate with their customers.

'The innovative part of this is the mapping language. At Xerox we've found that if you can connect the human dimension to the mathematical dimension, you get a lot of usability' he explained. 'In the end it's all about usability. Colour is so prevalent today, you shouldn't have to be an expert to handle it.'