Chromatic adaptation in a 2D photograph demonstrated by a D‐up viewer

Abstract

AbstractIt is said that we cannot have color constancy in a photograph. The concept of recognized visual space of illumination (RVSI) asserts that chromatic adaptation occurs when one perceives the illumination that is filling a space and not the objects in the space. It predicts then that if one perceives a 3D scene in a photograph, then color constancy will occur in the photograph. In this work, a dimension‐up (D‐up) viewer was developed to perceive a 3D scene on a 2D photograph, and the effect of chromatic adaptation was measured by the color appearance of a gray patch placed at the center of the photograph. Subjects saw the patch as a vivid color when they saw a photograph that had been taken under colored illumination, which is a normal experience in a real space observation. When the color appearance was measured by the elementary color naming method, the amount of chromaticness of the patch in percentage and the apparent hue were very similar to those observed in the 2‐room technique, thus confirming the prediction by the RVSI theory.