Methods and systems for determining a surface color of a target surface under an environment with an environmental light source. A plurality of images of the target surface are captured as the target surface is illuminated with a variable intensity, constant color light source and a constant intensity, constant color environmental light source, wherein the intensity of the light source on the target surface is varied by a known amount between the capturing of the images. A color feature tensor, independent of the environmental light source, is extracted from the image data, and used to infer a surface color of the target surface.