Chromatic adaptation and corresponding colors: an extensive and systematic study.

The world around us would look very different at noon or in the evening if the color of objects depended only on the reflected light entering our eye. Fortunately, the human visual system has the ability to adapt to the intensity and color of the illumination, producing an approximately color constant appearance of objects across changes in illumination. This ability, called chromatic adaptation, is however not perfect. In many practical applications, such as lighting design and color reproduction, it is important to know how similar objects will look under different illuminants. To find out, we need to be able to predict the shift in object color caused by changes in lighting. A chromatic adaptation transform (CAT) allows us to calculate colors that look similar under different illumination conditions (corresponding color CC). CATs and CCs have been studied intensively during the past decades because of their scientific potential to improve our understanding of human color vision and because of their practical implications in printing and display technology. Most previous studies were however limited to near neutral illuminants. New LED light source technologies open up a range of potentially chromatic illuminants, for which no systematic CC data or CAT is available. Therefore, this project intends to collect data to 1) increase our understanding (and modeling capabilities) of CA and 2) to derive a new CAT applicable to a wider range of illuminants.

Keywords:Chromatic adaptation, Chromatic illuminants, Colour appearance, Corresponding colours, Colour vision

Disciplines:Modelling, Multimedia processing