Automatic methods of photoelasticity have had a significant progress with the development of
automatic acquisition and image processing methods. This article concerns RGB photoelasticity, which
allows the determination of the photoelastic retardation using, usually, a single acquisition of the
isochromatic fringes in white light by a colour camera. In particular, the article presents an overview of
the main characteristics of RGB photoelasticity that is influence of the quarter-wave plate error, number
of acquisitions, type of light source, determination of low and high fringe orders, methods for searching
the retardation, scanning procedures, calibration on a material different from that under test, combined
use of the RGB and phase shifting methods. A short section on the applications of RGB photoelasticity
completes the article
