Expand this Topic clickable element to expand a topic
Skip to content
Optica Publishing Group

Color metamerism and the structure of illuminant space

Not Accessible

Your library or personal account may give you access

Abstract

The colors of two surfaces might appear exactly alike under one illuminant while varying under others. This is due to the metamerism phenomenon in which physically distinct reflectance spectra result in identical cone photoreceptor excitations. The existence of such metameric pairs can potentially cause great ambiguities for our visual perception by challenging phenomena such as color constancy. We investigated frequency and magnitude of metamerism in a wide range of scenarios by studying a large set of surface reflectance spectra illuminated under numerous natural and artificial sources of light. Our results extend previous studies in the literature by demonstrating that metamers are indeed relatively infrequent. Potentially troublesome cases in which two surfaces with an identical color under one illuminant appear very differently under a second illuminant are exceedingly rare. We used the frequency of metameric pairs in combination with non-metric multidimensional scaling to establish a new representation of illuminants based on metamerism. This approach imposes a systematic structure onto the representation of illuminants and allows to better prognosticate the likelihood of metamers under new illuminants.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

Full Article  |  PDF Article
More Like This
Frequency of metamerism in natural scenes

David H. Foster, Kinjiro Amano, Sérgio M. C. Nascimento, and Michael J. Foster
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 23(10) 2359-2372 (2006)

Predicting frequency of metamerism in natural scenes by entropy of colors

Gaoyang Feng and David H. Foster
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 29(2) A200-A208 (2012)

Image quality degradation of object-color metamer mismatching in digital camera color reproduction

Jueqin Qiu, Haisong Xu, Zhengnan Ye, and Changyu Diao
Appl. Opt. 57(11) 2851-2860 (2018)

Cited By

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Figures (4)

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Figure files are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Tables (5)

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article tables are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription

Select as filters


Select Topics Cancel
© Copyright 2024 | Optica Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved