Biological color perception is often compared to ideal color algorithms that attempt to estimate the surface properties of objects corresponding to the subjective impression of color (“intrinsic colors”) despite changes in scene illumination and content.  Recent work in philosophy by Hilbert and others presupposes that biological visual systems can accurately estimate intrinsic colors at least under some conditions.  Such algorithms can only work to the extent that there are physical constraints on possible surfaces and lighting in scenes that permit recovery of these “intrinsic colors”.  I’ll briefly review earlier work that focused on perception of flat Mondrian scenes and then review more recent work that considers the problems posed to an ideal visual system in three-dimensional scenes with non-uniform illumination and report a series of experiments evaluating how well human observers estimate color and lightness in such scenes and how well human observers estimate surface properties analogous to color such as gloss and roughness.  I will also discuss a recent experiment that challenges whether the subjective impression of color corresponds to an imperfect estimate of surface properties.  The results of this experiment indicate that perceived color is a systematic representation of surface properties and also illumination conditions.

Support: NIH EY08366

Ho, Y.-H., Landy. M. S.  & Maloney, L. T. (2008), Conjoint measurement of gloss and surface texture. Psychological Science, in press, 8/2007.

Doerschner, K., Boyaci, H. & Maloney, L. T. (2007), Testing limits on matte surface color perception in three-dimensional scenes with complex light fields, Vision Research, 47, 3409-3423.

Logvinenko, A. D. & Maloney, L. T.  (2006), The proximity structure of achromatic surface colors and the impossibility of asymmetric lightness matching. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 76-83.

Maloney, L. T. (1999), Physics-based approaches to modeling surface color perception.  In Gegenfurtner, K. R., & Sharpe, L. T.  [Eds] (1999), Color Vision: From Genes to Perception. Cambridge , UK : Cambridge University Press, pp. 387-422.