The color constancy of three-dimensional objects

Abstract

Human color constancy has been studied for over one hundred years, and there is extensive experimental data for the case where a spatially diffuse light source illuminates a set of flat matte surfaces. In natural viewing, however, three-dimensional objects are viewed in three-dimensional scenes. Little is known about color constancy for three-dimensional objects. We used a forced-choice task to measure the achromatic chromaticity of matte disks, matte spheres, and glossy spheres. In all cases, the test stimuli were viewed in the context of stereoscopically viewed graphics simulations of three-dimensional scenes, and we varied the scene illuminant. We studied conditions both where all cues were consistent with the simulated illuminant change (consistent-cue conditions) and where local contrast was silenced as a cue (reduced-cue conditions). We computed constancy indices from the achromatic chromaticities. To first order, constancy was similar for the three test object types. There was, however, a reliable interaction between test object type and cue condition. In the consistent-cue conditions, constancy tended to be best for the matte disks, while in the reduced-cue conditions constancy was best for the spheres. The presence of this interaction presents an important challenge for theorists who seek to generalize models that account for constancy for flat tests to the more general case of three-dimensional objects.

The Role of Binocular Disparity in Rapid Scene and Pattern Recognition

“…Furthermore, the question of how disparity and luminance contribute to pattern recognition is formally related to the question of how different sources of information contribute to the detection of threshold stimuli, and specifically of whether subthreshold summation takes place (e.g. Meinhardt, Persike, Mesenholl, & Hagemann, 2006), and to the question of how changes in individual dimensions contribute to the appearance of complex stimuli (Landy et al, 1995; To, Baddeley, Troscianko, & Tolhurst, 2011; To, Lovell, Troscianko, & Tolhurst, 2008). In all of these contexts, it is possible to compare the performance which is observed when combined stimuli are presented with the performance which can be predicted based on the results of the single-modality stimuli assuming independent processing of the two dimensions and linear combination of the responses.…”

“…see Landy, Maloney, Johnston, & Young, 1995), in the estimation of slant (e.g. Backus & Banks, 1999; Backus, Banks, van Ee, Crowell, & Crowell, 1999; Banks & Backus, 1998; Girshick & Banks, 2009; Hillis, Ernst, Banks, & Landy, 2002; Hillis, Watt, Landy, & Banks, 2004; Knill & Saunders, 2003), and in the perception of shape (e.g.…”

How to operationalise consciousness

“…The desire to get a detailed map of phenomenal colours led researchers to examine the structure of colour space in very controlled viewing conditions, usually with the goal of ensuring the adequate replication of colours, for example, in printing or on screen. In the last two decades this approach has been extended to begin mapping experiences of colours on backgrounds of varied colour (Ekroll, Faul, & Niederee, ; Ekroll, Faul, Niederee, & Richter, ) in more complex stimulus configurations (Ekroll et al, ) containing shadows (Logvinenko, ) and with 3D objects (Xiao, Hurst, MacIntyre, & Brainard, ). It might be the case that more than three dimensions are needed to map the colour experiences elicited by complex stimuli (Logvinenko, , ; Tokunaga & Logvinenko, ).…”

Rendering Techniques in 3D Computer Graphics Based on Changes in the Brightness of the Object Background

“…The studies of illumination and material inluence on renderings revealed that observers perceive the colours that are reproduced in renderings diferently as they are predicted by algorithms of various rendering methods [41][42][43].…”

“…Xiao and colleagues [41,42] demonstrated that by diferent illumination conditions, there are diferences in colour perception between graphical simulations of mate disks and specular spheres. Yang and colleagues [44,45] presented an expanded study of the correlation between colour perception of surfaces and illumination cues.…”