A method of color selection is described including a component to parse a natural language color specification into a set of colloquial color names and a set of flags to indicate whether a color name is to be included or excluded from the color selection. Components are also included to find the best matches of colloquial color names in a library of colloquial color names and map the best matches to one or more standard colors in a library of standard colors. A transform building component uses the standard colors names and the flags to create a mathematical selection transform, typically in the form of a multi-dimensional lookup table. If necessary, another component converts arbitrary sets of test color coordinates into color encoding identical to that used for the standard colors to produce a color selection.