Chromatic Distribution Affects Color Constancy M. Lucassen, A. Gijsenij, T. Gevers In Perception 2008. [bibtex] [url]

What happens with our color constancy performance when varying the chromatic distribution of a stimulus while keeping average chromaticity fixed? We synthesized images composed of about 900 color patches varying in CIE L*a*b* values. Both the average chromaticity and the chromatic distribution were varied. The 2D Gaussian distribution of a*b* values was either circular, or ellipsoid with the variance in a* 5 times that in b*, or vice versa. Four illuminants (equidistant from the neutral point) were used to simulate illumination of the color patches by daylight variants. Using triad-comparison, observers judged the color naturalness of the scenes under two illuminants (6 illuminant pairs possible) against the scenes under neutral reference illumination. They indicated which of the two scenes (illuminants) reproduced the colors of the reference scene most closely. Our results show that when the dominant axis in the chromatic distribution is parallel to the direction of the illuminant change, color constancy is best. We conclude that color constancy depends on the chromatic distribution of the scene.

@Article{LucassenPerception2008,
  author       = "Lucassen, M. and Gijsenij, A. and Gevers, T.",
  title        = "Chromatic Distribution Affects Color Constancy",
  journal      = "Perception",
  number       = "supplement",
  volume       = "37",
  pages        = "147",
  year         = "2008",
  url          = "https://ivi.fnwi.uva.nl/isis/publications/2008/LucassenPerception2008",
  has_image    = 1
}