Abstract

The color appearance of a particular light is very difficult to specify. The perceptual attributes of color vision — hue, saturation and brightness — are determined by both the light itself and the characteristics of other lights nearby. This has been known for nearly 150 years (Chevreul, 1839) but remains a fundamental problem in color vision. A related observation is that lights perceived as distinctly different colors when viewed in isolation can appear the same color when presented in a complex stimulus field. Thus by varying adaptation and contrast, (1) a single light can appear many different colors and (2) a single color percept can be achieved with various lights that appear different from each other when seen alone.

© 1987 Optical Society of America