Measuring colour afterimage perception

Abstract

Afterimages are common and frequent perceptual phenomena of everyday life. When looking into a high-intensity light source and suddenly turning away from it, a temporary “ghost” of the light source remains in perception, for a while. A highly saturated, coloured incident light has a different effect on the three types of cone cells. Therefore, the fast change in the colour of incident light triggers different intensity afterimage on the different types of cones, and the observer perceives a colour afterimage disappearing in a between 10- and 100-second timescale. By choosing incident light colours, colour afterimages can be applied in visual design, like in modern, dynamic advertising. Our previous work describes simulation of colour afterimages triggered by given colour combinations. For the validation of simulation, preliminary tests were performed with 20 subjects. Test results suggested the possibility of age dependence of intensity and duration of colour afterimages. In this work, we present the experimental results of 28 observers with different ages and gender. The disappearing time and perceived initial “intensity” of the colour afterimages were measured in nine fast colour transition cases.