Cheese ripening is a complex biochemical process driven by microbial communities composed of both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Surface-ripened cheeses are widely consumed all over the world and are appreciated for their characteristic flavor and color. Microbial community composition has been studied for a long time on surface-ripened cheeses, but only limited knowledge has been acquired about its in situ metabolic activities. For example, the research conducted in 1997-2003 by W. Bockelmann et al. on Tilsit provided some useful information about the strains involved, their interactions, without any accurate determination of the color (e.g. no spectrocolorimetry in the CIE Lab color space), nor fine chemical structural analysis of the pigments/colorants located in the microorganisms, the cultures or the rinds. Submitted by a specialist of microbial pigments for food use, the present paper will put in parallel (1) the analytical procedures for microbial pigments analysis, (2) the pigments produced by some cheese-ripening bacteria cultivated alone or in co-culture with yeast(s), (3) the pigments isolated from and characterized in the rind of some Protected Designation of Origin cheeses, (4) the tentative additional species present in rinds and revealed by high-throughput sequencing, which could have a role in cheese color development. As concluding comments, the diverse chemical classes of pigments proven to be involved in the rind’s color or suspected to be involved, the microorganisms proven to be involved or suspected to be involved will be summarized. For the last point, the contribution of so-called ‘fancy’ meta-omics analyses will be highlighted, ‘fancy’ being used here in a provocative manner.