The focus of the study is high quality image acquisition in colorimetric and multispectral formats. The aim is to combine the spatial resolution of digital images with the spectral resolution of color measurement instruments, to allow for accurate colorimetric and spectral measurements in each pixel of the acquired images. An experimental image acquisition system is used, which besides trichromatic RGB filters also provides the possibility of acquiring multi-channel images, using a set of narrowband filters. To derive mappings to colorimetric and multispectral representations, two conceptually different approaches are used. In the model-based characterization, the physical model describing the image acquisition process is inverted, to reconstruct spectral reflectance from the recorded device response. In the empirical characterization, the characteristics of the individual components are ignored, and the functions are derived by relating the device response for a set of test colors to the corresponding colorimetric and spectral measurements, using linear and polynomial least squares regression. The results indicate that for trichromatic imaging, accurate colorimetric mappings can be derived by the empirical approach, using polynomial regression to CIEXYZ and CIELAB. However, accurate spectral reconstructions requires for multi-channel imaging, with the best results obtained using the model-based approach.