A footwear database system receives precision three dimensional foot image data of imaged feet of human beings, and receives precision footlast 3D image data from footwear manufacturers for storage into databases for automatic determination of footwear sizes. After imaging feet and storing the footlast data, a customer can thereafter remotely select, for example, through catalogs and web sites, a style of footwear and the footwear database system then determines the acceptable and best fitting size for the desired style of the footwear of a respective footwear manufacturer, and in so doing provides an automatic best fitting size selection for reducing footwear returns due to poor and uncomfortable fits.