  The ongoing surveys of galaxies and those for the next generation of
telescopes will demand the execution of high-CPU consuming machine codes for
recovering detailed star formation histories (SFHs) and hence age-metallicity
relationships (AMRs). We present here an expeditive method which provides
quick-look AMRs on the basis of representative ages and metallicities obtained
from colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) analyses. We have tested its perfomance by
generating synthetic CMDs for a wide variety of galaxy SFHs. The representative
AMRs turn out to be reliable down to a magnitude limit with a photometric
completeness factor higher than $\sim$ 85 per cent, and trace the chemical
evolution history for any stellar population (represented by a mean age and an
intrinsic age spread) with a total mass within ~ 40 per cent of the more
massive stellar population in the galaxy.
