  In this work, we want to find out if the IMF can be determined from colour
images, integrated colours, or mass-to-light ratios, especially at high
redshift, where galaxies cannot be resolved into individual stars, which would
enable us to investigate dependencies of the IMF on cosmological epoch. We use
chemo-dynamical models to investigate the influence of the Initial Mass
Function (IMF) on the evolution of a Milky Way-type disk galaxy, in particular
of its colours. We find that the effect of the IMF on the internal gas
absorption is larger than its effect on the light from the stellar content.
However, the two effects work in the opposite sense: An IMF with more high mass
stars leads to brighter and bluer star-light, but also to more interstellar
dust and thus to more absorption, causing a kind of "IMF degeneracy". The most
likely wavelength region in which to detect IMF effects is the infrared (i. e.,
JHK). We also provide photometric absorption and inclination corrections in the
SDSS ugriz and the HST WFPC2 and NICMOS systems.
