Monday, September 30, 2019

WIRED Covers Color Constancy


Wired's Robbie Gonzalez visits neuroscientist David Eagleman to explore the perception of color constancy, which they demonstrate by building a large model of my diagram from Color and Light. (Direct link to YouTube) Nice work, you guys!

5 comments:

scottT said...

Hey, you got a mention there too. I think in the case of the model in the real environment, the green "illuminate" was not only an optical illusion, but actual greenish reflected light which influenced the color which I don't think they explained. Still, it works very well in your painting.

Most non-artists don't spend a lot of time thinking about the effect of light temperature and reflected light on "local color". An apple is red, a banana is yellow, etc. It's hard enough to see past even if you have been training yourself to do it.

James Gurney said...

Yeah, I think their models would have been more effective if they shifted the hues of the apparently “white” colors as well as all the other colors.

Penn Tomassetti said...

This was a very insightful experiment. I agree that they needed to show the cubes against a more dominant red versus green background. Working in Photoshop to match exact colors has shown me that not only do we see certain colors differently depending on environmental color, but so does the camera. Gold or copper reflecting onto a white surface literally changes the white pixels of a picture blue, as in the case of the white dress.
Those who edit photography often have to accept on faith that the person proofing photo colors sees too much green and needs that color to shift slightly toward the red spectrum, even if the editor can't see that issue in the same way.

j_avina88 said...

I love sharing videos like this with friends and family who tend to think that color is easy. It's not, it's incredibly complex and there's so much to learn about it! Thanks for sharing!

Robert Michael Walsh said...

Reminds me of the Edwin Land color experiments in the early 1960s.