Surgical simulators are excellent training tools for minimally invasive procedures but are currently lacking in realistic tissue rendering and tissue responses to manipulation. Accurate color representation of tissues may add realism to simulators and provide medically relevant information. The goal of this study was to determine feasible methods for measuring color of in vivo tissue, specifically liver, in a standardized color space. Several compressions were applied to in vivo porcine liver. Three methods were then used to determine the CIELab and/or sRGB colors of normal and damaged liver. Results suggest that there are significant differences between normal and damaged liver color.