Affective Effect of Multi-source Portraits Under Various Illuminants on One Scene

Abstract

Abstract When portraits taken under various illuminants are placed together, they appear disparate from each other due to observers’ chromatic adaption to each portrait locally. Because the human perception has strong attachment to the memory color of human skin, it may cause an affective effect. This study intends to identify the affective effect of viewing multiple number of portraits whose white balance are not aligned. A visual assessment was conveyed, where portraits from different sources were matched. To simulate various illuminant conditions, three alterations of white balance were prepared for each portrait-warm (3000 K), neutral (6500 K), and cool tones (8000 K). This makes nine combinations for each stimulus. In Study I, 31 Korean college students were presented with a random one by one combination. Based on their subjective judgments on five criteria—authenticity, naturalness, professionality, content conveyance, and overall satisfaction—a statistical analysis was performed. In Study II, a creative writing session was followed in that the participants presumed the message of the portrait matches, and the content analysis was conducted. The results showed that a match of neutrally balanced portraits best appealed authentic and professional styles while minimizing any affective bias. When matches consisted of contrasting tones, on the other hand, they delivered content conveyance better while sacrificing naturalness of portraits. The white balance is limited to three types though this study provides evidence that it is a matter of choice to align, adjust, or alter the white balance of multi-sourced portraits depending on the aiming affective effect.