A system and method of quantifying color and intensity of light sources including LEDs, HBLEDs (High Brightness LEDs), and other Solid State Lights (SSLs) using C-parameters to model a Spectral Power Distribution (SPD) to improve precision, accuracy, repeatability and usefulness of measurement of optical properties of wavelength and radiant flux in manufacturing of an object, designing products and processes that use the object, and describing / defining the object, is provided. In one embodiment, a method of characterizing a Solid State Light (SSL) source includes a SSL source under test (DUT), a Spectral Power Distribution (SPD) of light emission of the SSL source, a curve-fitting function, a set of configuration data comprising the order of the curve-fitting function, the number of nodes, wavelength boundary limits, saturation threshold, and noise floor threshold, a computing device for curve-fitting, node detection, iteration and program control and inputting and outputting data; and a set of C-Parameters, noise parameters, and confidence values.