present invention are directed to industrial and process control applications as well it is an accepted practice to analyze a chromatographic peak in order to obtain two response factors peak height and peak area each of these factors gives a response that is in proportion to the amount of material injected on to a chromatography column however the height and area of a chromatographic peak can be obtained only when the underlying baseline of the peak is known and the start and stop times of the peak can be ascertained it is contemplated within this disclosure that the identification of the lift off and touchdown points can be more accurately determined for isolated peaks peak clusters and the boundaries of peak shoulders it is further contemplated within this disclosure that the detection of boundaries of peak shoulders can be more accurately determined and that this accurate determination can enable more precise fraction collection in the analysis of an isolated peak the inventive method like the prior art finds a straight line whose end points connect two points on a chromatographic peak the two points are the lift off and touchdown points and the straight line is the baseline for the peak the apex of a chromatographic peak is a local minimum of curvature the second derivative measures the curvature of the profile at each point in time in the inventive method the local minimum of the second derivative is used to detect a peak and to locate the peak 39 s apex the detection of a peak by the use of the second derivative allows.