Abstract

The influence of surrounding colors on the appearance of a focal region is one of the oldest topics of vision research, and a wide variety of experimental paradigms has produced large quantities of data. From the beginning investigators were interested in the role of contrast in everyday color appearance. For the sake of close experimental control, most of that work involved very simple stimulus patterns. As a consequence relatively little systematic information has been available concerning the role of color contrast in patterns more closely approximating the conditions of everyday scenes. Most natural scenes involve many different chromaticies varying over the relatively small range produced by reflective surfaces under nearly white illumination. My colleagues and I have recently performed a series of experiments on contrast in complex patterns¹,².

© 1987 Optical Society of America