A skin detection technique suitable for on-chip integration into color CMOS imagers is proposed. The technique uses color information in the normalized rgb color space to discriminate between skin and non-skin color pixels. Its current-mode implementation achieves real-time skin detection. Furthermore, the pixel classification is performed on read-out, allowing high-speed processing without the need for any on-chip memory elements. Fully analog, the proposed VLSI architecture combines compactness, programmability and low power operation.