Simultaneous color constancy: how surface color perception varies with the illuminant

Abstract

In two experiments simultaneous color constancy was measured using simulations of illuminated surfaces presented on a CRT monitor. Subjects saw two identical Mondrians side-by-side: one Mondrian rendered under a standard illuminant, the other rendered under one of several test illuminants. The matching field was adjusted under the test illuminant so that it (a) had the same hue, saturation, and brightness (appearance match) or (b) looked as if it were cut from the same piece of paper (surface match) as a test surface under the standard illuminant. Matches were set for three different surface collections. The surface matches showed a much higher level of constancy than the appearance matches. The adjustment in the surface matches was nearly complete in the L and M cone data, and deviations from perfect constancy were mainly due to failures in the adjustment of the S cone signals. Besides this difference in amount of adjustment, the appearance and surface matches showed two major similarities. First, both types of matches were well described by simple parametric models. In particular, a model based on the notion of von Kries adjustment provided a good, although not perfect, description of the data. Second, for both types of matches the illuminant adjustment was largely independent of the surface collection in the image. The two types of matches thus differed only quantitatively, there was no qualitative difference between them.