The dual role of chromatic backgrounds in color perception

doi:10.1016/0042-6989(78)90257-2

Vision Research

Volume 18, Issue 12, 1978, Pages 1649-1661

https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(78)90257-2 Get rights and content

Abstract

This investigation explores the color appearance changes resulting from a continuously presented adapting field. In every experiment, an incremental mixture of red and green monochromatic lights was superimposed on top of a steady red background field. On each experimental trial the intensities of the red background and the red increment were fixed: the subject adjusted the intensity of the green light so that the incremental mixture appeared a “pure” (neither slightly reddish nor greenish) yellow. In one experiment, the increment was a steadily viewed thin annulus seen on a larger background: in another experiment the increment was identical to the background in size and retinal location but was presented as a brief ( 150 msec) flash: in the final experiment the increment was a briefly flashed thin annulus seen on a larger background.

For any fixed, relatively dim background level the intensities of the red and green increments were approximately in constant ratio over a nearly 2 log unit range of test intensities. However, with more intense adapting fields the green light to red light incremental intensity ratio decreased as the test intensity was increased, with the ratio asymptoting at high test levels to an adaptation-intensity dependent value.

The empirical observations reject both von Kries' Coefficient Law and the notion that only spatial (and or temporal) transients contribute to color signals. The results are consistent with a “two-process” theory where the adapting field is assumed both to contribute directly to the chromatic signal and simultaneously to alter the amplitudes (but not shapes) of the spectral sensitivity functions associated with the three receptor-types of color vision.

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Effects of background and contour luminance on the hue and brightness of the Watercolor effect
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Citation Excerpt :
Indeed, the WCE has generally been demonstrated for a background of higher luminance than both inner and outer contours. Although the surround (e.g., the background) is known to be an important influence of color appearance (Brenner & Cornelissen, 2002; Brown & MacLeod, 1997; Shevell, 1978; Walraven, 1976), it has not been systematically explored for the coloration effect in the WCE. In addition, most studies of the WCE focus solely on its coloration effect.
Conjoint measurement was used to investigate the joint influences of the luminance of the background and the inner contour on hue- and brightness filling-in for a stimulus configuration generating a water-color effect (WCE), i.e., a wiggly bi-chromatic contour enclosing a region with the lower luminance component on the exterior. Two stimuli with the background and inner contour luminances covarying independently were successively presented, and in separate experiments, the observer judged which member of the pair’s interior regions contained a stronger hue or was brighter. Braided-contour control stimuli that generated little or no perceptual filling-in were also used to assess whether observers were judging the interior regions and not the contours themselves. Three nested models of the contributions of the background and inner contour to the judgments were fit to the data by maximum likelihood and evaluated by likelihood ratio tests. Both stimulus components contributed to both the hue and brightness of the interior region with increasing luminance of the inner contour generating an assimilative filling-in for the hue judgments but a contrast effect for the brightness judgments. Control analyses showed negligible effects for the order of the luminance of the background or inner contour on the judgments. An additive contribution of both components was rejected in favor of a saturated model in which the responses depended on the levels of both stimulus components. For the hue judgments, increased background luminance led to greater hue filling-in at higher luminances of the interior contour. For the brightness judgments, the higher background luminance generated less brightness filling-in at higher luminances of the interior contour. The results indicate different effects of the inner contour and background on the induction of the brightness and coloration percepts of the WCE, suggesting that they are mediated by different mechanisms.
Spatial and temporal aspects of chromatic adaptation and their functional significance for colour constancy
2014, Vision Research
Citation Excerpt :
As such, chromatic adaptation is an important sensory process for obtaining colour constancy. Psychophysically identified mechanisms of chromatic adaptation comprise multiplicative gain control (von Kries type mechanisms), and repetitive steps of subtractive spatial and temporal filtering with local but also spatially extensive components (either via spatial or temporal mechanisms; two-process model; Geisler, 1983; Hayhoe, Benimoff, & Hood, 1987; Hayhoe & Wenderoth, 1991; Jameson & Hurvich, 1972; Shevell, 1978; Walraven, 1976; Whittle & Challands, 1969). Correlated physiological processes include light adaptation and contrast gain control and adaptation, which take place, repetitively, at several stages of the visual pathways and at different spatial and temporal scales (reviewed in Carandini & Heeger, 2013; Heeger, 1992; Kohn, 2007).
Illumination in natural scenes changes at multiple temporal and spatial scales: slow changes in global illumination occur in the course of a day, and we encounter fast and localised illumination changes when visually exploring the non-uniform light field of three-dimensional scenes; in addition, very long-term chromatic variations may come from the environment, like for example seasonal changes. In this context, I consider the temporal and spatial properties of chromatic adaptation and discuss their functional significance for colour constancy in three-dimensional scenes. A process of fast spatial tuning in chromatic adaptation is proposed as a possible sensory mechanism for linking colour constancy to the spatial structure of a scene. The observed middlewavelength selectivity of this process is particularly suitable for adaptation to the mean chromaticity and the compensation of interreflections in natural scenes. Two types of sensory colour constancy are distinguished, based on the functional differences of their temporal and spatial scales: a slow type, operating at a global scale for the compensation of the ambient illumination; and a fast colour constancy, which is locally restricted and well suited to compensate region-specific variations in the light field of three dimensional scenes.
The dynamic range of human lightness perception
2011, Current Biology
Natural viewing challenges the visual system with images that have a dynamic range of light intensity (luminance) that can approach 1,000,000:1 and that often exceeds 10,000:1 [1, 2]. The range of perceived surface reflectance (lightness), however, can be well approximated by the Munsell matte neutral scale (N 2.0/ to N 9.5/), consisting of surfaces whose reflectance varies by about 30:1. Thus, the visual system must map a large range of surface luminance onto a much smaller range of surface lightness. We measured this mapping in images with a dynamic range close to that of natural images. We studied simple images that lacked segmentation cues that would indicate multiple regions of illumination. We found a remarkable degree of compression: at a single image location, a stimulus luminance range of 5,905:1 can be mapped onto an extended lightness scale that has a reflectance range of 100:1. We characterized how the luminance-to-lightness mapping changes with stimulus context. Our data rule out theories that predict perceived lightness from luminance ratios or Weber contrast. A mechanistic model connects our data to theories of adaptation and provides insight about how the underlying visual response varies with context.
Very-long-term and short-term chromatic adaptation: Are their influences cumulative?
2011, Vision Research
Citation Excerpt :
The adapting effect decays within seconds or minutes (Jameson, Hurvich, & Varner, 1979; Rinner & Gegenfurtner, 2000). Many studies support a two-process model of short-term chromatic adaptation (Cicerone, Krantz, & Larmier, 1975; Drum, 1981; Guth, Massof, & Benzschawel, 1980; Hayhoe & Wenderoth, 1991; Jameson & Hurvich, 1972; Larimer, 1981; Shevell, 1978; Ware & Cowan, 1982). Very-long-term (VLT) chromatic adaptation has been little studied until recently.
Very-long-term (VLT) chromatic adaptation results from exposure to an altered chromatic environment for days or weeks. Color shifts from VLT adaptation are observed hours or days after leaving the altered environment. Short-term chromatic adaptation, on the other hand, results from exposure for a few minutes or less, with color shifts measured within seconds or a few minutes after the adapting light is extinguished; recovery to the pre-adapted state is complete in less than an hour. Here, both types of adaptation were combined. All adaptation was to reddish-appearing long-wavelength light. Shifts in unique yellow were measured following adaptation. Previous studies demonstrate shifts in unique yellow due to VLT chromatic adaptation, but shifts from short-term chromatic adaptation to comparable adapting light can be far greater than from VLT adaptation. The question considered here is whether the color shifts from VLT adaptation are cumulative with large shifts from short-term adaptation or, alternatively, does simultaneous short-term adaptation eliminate color shifts caused by VLT adaptation. The results show the color shifts from VLT and short-term adaptation together are cumulative, which indicates that both short-term and very-long-term chromatic adaptation affect color perception during natural viewing.
A simple model describes large individual differences in simultaneous colour contrast
2009, Vision Research
Citation Excerpt :
If the hypothesis is true, it would mean that traditional notions of simultaneous colour contrast as a unidirectional transform instead of as a non-linear expansion are fundamentally misleading. In this connection, it should be noted that it is quite easy to confuse an expansion with a unidirectional transform such as background discounting (Chichilnisky & Wandell, 1995; Jameson & Hurvich, 1961; Mausfeld & Niederée, 1993; Shevell, 1978, 1980; Walraven, 1976) if one investigates only a limited range of target colours which do not span the centre of expansion. Experiments with unique hue and grey settings would be a case in point.
We report experimental evidence for substantial individual differences in the susceptibility to simultaneous colour contrast. Interestingly, we found that not only the general amount of colour induction varies across observers, but also the general shape of the curves describing asymmetric matching data. A simple model based on von Kries adaptation and crispening describes the data rather well when we regard its free parameters as observer specific. We argue that the von Kries component reflects the action of a temporal adaptation mechanism, while the crispening component describes the action of the instantaneous, purely spatial mechanism most appropriately labeled simultaneous colour contrast. An interesting consequence of this view is that traditional ideas about the general characteristics of simultaneous contrast must be considered as misleading. According to Kirschmann’s 4th law, for instance, the simultaneous contrast effect should increase with increasing saturation of the surround, but crispening predicts the converse. Based on this reasoning, we offer a plausible explanation for the mixed evidence on the validity of Kirschmann’s 4th law. We also argue that simultaneous contrast, the crispening effect, Meyer’s effect and the gamut expansion effect are just different names for the same basic phenomenon.
The Role of Layered Scene Representations in Color Appearance
2009, Current Biology
Citation Excerpt :
A fundamental goal of color science is to understand how the visual system exploits contextual relationships between a target and its visual “environment” to recover the causes of the chromatic variation in a scene. One of the most studied forms of contextual effects in color vision involves the perceived shift in a target's color when placed in different scenes [11, 12]. Such phenomena are typically referred to as “color induction” because the perceived color of a target is affected by its context.
The chromatic appearance of a surface depends on its surrounding scene. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for such phenomena, ranging from low-level gain control or adaptation processes that adjust for such properties as a scene's chromatic mean 1, 2 and covariance structure 3, 4, 5, to higher-level computations that compensate for the chromatic content of the illuminant [6]. Despite their differences, a shared prediction of all such processes is that color induction should be limited to a full discounting of the surround or illuminant color—that is, an opponent color shift equal in magnitude to the chromatic bias of the surround or illuminant. Here, we report new forms of chromatic induction that can be significantly larger than predicted by all such models. We show that when the geometric and chromatic relationships between a target and its surround support a decomposition of an image into multiple layers, the induced color can significantly exceed the full discounting prediction. Similar phenomena are also observed with achromatic stimuli, suggesting that common processes of perceptual decomposition are involved in both forms of induction. These results demonstrate that information about the geometric and photometric relationship between a target and its surround is utilized by the mechanisms involved in color induction.

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¹: Present address: Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Chicago, 5848 S. University Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60637, U.S.A.

View full text

The dual role of chromatic backgrounds in color perception

Abstract

Algorithms for Minimization without Derivatives

Opponent-process additivity—III. Effect of moderate chromatic adaptation

Vision Res.

Visual adaptation in relation to brief conditioning stimuli

Monocular and binocular aftereffects of chromatic adaptation

Science

Interocular hue shifts and pressure blindness

Vision Res.

Zur Lehre vom Lichtsinne

Further development of a quantified opponent-colors theory

Some quantitative aspects of an opponent-colors theory. I. Chromatic responses and spectral saturation

J. opt. Soc. Am.

Perceived color and its dependence on focal, surrounding, and preceding stimulus variables

J. opt. Soc. Am.

Opponent chromatic induction: Experimental evaluation and theoretical account

J. opt. Soc. Am.

Theory of brightness and color contrast in human vision

Vision Res.

Color adaptation: Sensitivity, contrast, and afterimages