An apparatus and method for assessing photodamage has a digital imaging system for recording blue light imagining and in particular the green signal response intensity of the skin of a person, which is indicative of elastotic material and photodamage. Because the image data has a numerical intensity value, which may be expressed in RGB or L*a*b* colorspace, the image data taken from one image can be numerically compared to that of one or more other images and the image data is amenable to numerical and statistical analysis. Comparison to population profiles/image data permits an individual's image data to be characterized numerically, such as by a relative score or percentile rating. The image data can also be used to ascertain the degree of variation over a surface such as the face, with wider variation being indicative of greater photodamage.