Comparing lighting quality evaluations of real scenes with those from high dynamic range and conventional images

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Thirty-nine participants viewed six interior scenes in an office/laboratory building and rated them for brightness, uniformity, pleasantness, and glare. The scenes were viewed in three presentation modes: participants saw the real space and images of the spaces on a 17-inch computer monitor in both conventional and high dynamic range (HDR) mode. HDR mode allowed the high range of luminances in the real scene to be accurately reproduced, with maximum luminances more than 10 times higher than those in the conventional images. For those participants who saw the images before the real spaces (the most relevant order for practical applications), the HDR images were rated as significantly more realistic than the conventional images. However, this effect was limited to scenes with relatively large areas of high luminance, which in this study was represented by scenes with windows and daylight. Ratings of the HDR images were significantly related to simple photometric descriptors of the images in the expected manner: Brightness and glare ratings were positively correlated with overall and elevated luminance, and nonuniformity ratings were positively correlated with luminance variability. These results suggest that for evaluations of visual appearance of interior scenes featuring large areas of high luminance, the HDR method may be used as a surrogate for experiencing a real space both for lighting quality research, and in the design process.