Abstract

Color constancy is the phenomenon in which the colors of surfaces remain approximately constant despite considerable variations in the physical signals reaching the eyes from those surfaces. The analysis of color constancy is commonly restricted to changes in the intensity and chromaticity of the illuminant. We have been exploring aspects of color constancy which occur in the absence of shifts in the mean intensity or chromaticity of the stimulus, but depend instead on changes in the variance of the tristimulus values of the set of visible surfaces. (In natural settings, such effects may be due either to desaturation by haze, or to changes in the bandwidth of the illuminant.) The effects we consider are inconsistent with most previously published theories of color constancy.

© 1992 Optical Society of America