Exploratory investigation of perceptual color scaling.

Abstract

A viewing situation of moderate complexity was used in the present study. Two groups of color samples were used, one with constant hue and one with varied hue. Ratio judgments of color difference were obtained by having observers set the physical distance between pairs of color samples to represent the ratio of the size of visual differences relative to a standard difference created by setting two other color samples a fixed distance apart. The scaled color judgments were subjected to the Shepard–Kruskal nonmetric technique of multidimensional analysis. A comparison was made between the nonmetric analysis and more-conventional metric analyses where comparable scaling results were obtained. The outcome of this comparison was that with a nonmetric technique, and with an intrinsically imprecise scaling technique, meaningful metric visual-scaling information became available. Good agreement was found with Munsell scales and with Godlove and MacAdam predictions of visual distance.