Perception Of Glossiness Research Articles

Impact of Display Sub-Pixel Arrays on Perceived Gloss and Transparency.

In recent years, improvements in display image quality have made it easier to perceive rich object information, such as gloss and transparency, from images, known as shitsukan. Do the different display specifications in the world affect their appearance? Clarifying the effects of differences in pixel structure on shitsukan perception is necessary to realize shitsukan management for displays with different hardware structures, which has not been fully clarified before. In this study, we experimentally investigated the effects of display pixel arrays on the perception of glossiness and transparency. In a visual evaluation experiment, we investigated the effects of three types of sub-pixel arrays (RGB, RGBW, and PenTile) on the perception of glossiness and transparency using natural images. The results confirmed that sub-pixel arrays affect the appearance of glossiness and transparency. A general relationship of RGB > PenTile > RGBW for glossiness and RGB > RGBW > PenTile for transparency was found; however, detailed analysis, such as cluster analysis, confirmed that the relative superiority of these sub-pixel arrays may vary depending on the observer and image content.

Study for skin gloss perception using computer modulation and frequency separation on surface reflection.

Skin gloss is a parameter of beauty and health and is used to evaluate the efficacy of makeup or skin care products. Skin gloss is a perception-based characteristic, which yet needs to be evaluated quantitatively and objectively. This study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the perception of matte, glossiness and greasiness on Korean women's skin, focusing on the effect of surface reflection. In this study, a visual evaluation of skin gloss was performed using modulated images that combined facial reference (normal) images with images characterized by 64 different levels of surface reflection to investigate factors that might affect the perception of matte, glossy and greasy skin. Fifteen participants classified the respective images into three categories (matte, glossy and greasy), and the intensity of each image was rated using a three-point scale (weak, moderate or strong). A multinomial logistic regression analysis was performed using 960 data points (n = 64 × 15). A high-frequency average + 1 standard deviation (SD = 4) was set as the criterion for a highly glossy object. A significant difference was found between the three categories considering four parameters: low-frequency mean (LFM) and SD (LFSD) and high-frequency mean (HFM) and SD (HFSD). The results of the multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that LFM and HFSD were significant influencing factors for perceiving matte, glossiness and greasiness. As the LFM and HFSD of the images increased, perception changed from matte, to glossy and greasy. Further, the total number and total area of highly glossy objects were significantly different among the three categories. We identified four different factors related to perceiving matte, glossiness and greasiness on the faces of Korean women, including the LFM and HFSD of surface reflection, as well as the number of highly glossy objects and the area of surface reflection. Furthermore, we identified evenness of shine as a key factor for the perception of greasiness. These parameters could be useful for distinguishing skin gloss and for a quantitative evaluation of greasiness.

Perception of Translucency and Glossiness: Influence of the Optical Scattering Properties on Sensory Evaluation

In the cosmetics industry, fine particles suspended or dispersed in a medium are widely used. Optical properties of the medium can be an indicator for evaluating the performance of cosmetic product, such as the ultraviolet protection capacity of sunscreens and also its appearance. However, the relationship between the optical properties and the appearance of the product has not been clarified. In this study, dispersions of fine particles with titanium dioxide or zinc oxide were used as scattering medium to clarify the relation between their scattering properties and changes in visual perception. For visual perception, sensory tests with human panelists were performed using a custom-designed apparatus to inspect the samples and evaluate the two visual sensory quantities, “glossiness” and “translucency”. The sensory test employed Thurston’s one-pair comparison method, and a total of 18 panelists were asked to evaluate the samples. The sensory tests showed that the translucency became stronger as the scattering coefficient decreased. On the other hand, only the samples in the group with the highest scattering coefficient showed a slightly low glossiness. In contrast, the other samples showed little difference in glossiness due to the difference in scattering coefficients. The results of this study indicate that the appearance of cosmetics products can be influenced by controlling the scattering properties of the medium.

Constructing glossiness perception model of computer graphics with sounds

In this paper, we construct a model for cross-modal perception of glossiness by investigating the interaction between sounds and graphics. First, we conduct evaluation experiments on cross-modal glossiness perception using sounds and graphics stimuli. There are three types of stimuli in the experiments. The stimuli are visual stimuli (22 stimuli), audio stimuli (15 stimuli) and audiovisual stimuli (330 stimuli). Also, there are three sections in the experiments. The first one is a visual experiment, the second one is an audiovisual experiment, and the third one is an auditory experiment. For the evaluation of glossiness, the magnitude evaluation method is applied. Second, we analyze the influence of sounds on glossiness perception from the experimental results. The results suggest that the cross-modal perception of glossiness can be represented as a combination of visual-only perception and auditory-only perception. Then, based on the results, we construct a model by a linear sum of computer graphics and sound parameters. Finally, we confirm the feasibility of the cross-modal glossiness perception model through a validation experiment.

The Perception of Glossiness in the Human Brain

The Perception of Glossiness in the Human Brain

Human cortical areas involved in perception of surface glossiness

Glossiness is the visual appearance of an object's surface as defined by its surface reflectance properties. Despite its ecological importance, little is known about the neural substrates underlying its perception. In this study, we performed the first human neuroimaging experiments that directly investigated where the processing of glossiness resides in the visual cortex. First, we investigated the cortical regions that were more activated by observing high glossiness compared with low glossiness, where the effects of simple luminance and luminance contrast were dissociated by controlling the illumination conditions (Experiment 1). As cortical regions that may be related to the processing of glossiness, V2, V3, hV4, VO-1, VO-2, collateral sulcus (CoS), LO-1, and V3A/B were identified, which also showed significant correlation with the perceived level of glossiness. This result is consistent with the recent monkey studies that identified selective neural response to glossiness in the ventral visual pathway, except for V3A/B in the dorsal visual pathway, whose involvement in the processing of glossiness could be specific to the human visual system. Second, we investigated the cortical regions that were modulated by selective attention to glossiness (Experiment 2). The visual areas that showed higher activation to attention to glossiness than that to either form or orientation were identified as right hV4, right VO-2, and right V3A/B, which were commonly identified in Experiment 1. The results indicate that these commonly identified visual areas in the human visual cortex may play important roles in glossiness perception.

Enhancement of Glossiness Perception by Retinal-Image Motion: Additional Effect of Head-Yoked Motion Parallax

It has been argued that when an observer moves, a contingent retinal-image motion of a stimulus would strengthen the perceived glossiness. This would be attributed to the veridical perception of three-dimensional structure by motion parallax. However, it has not been investigated whether the effect of motion parallax is more than that of retinal-image motion of the stimulus. Using a magnitude estimation method, we examine in this paper whether cross-modal coordination of the stimulus change and the observer's motion (i.e., motion parallax) is essential or the retinal-image motion alone is sufficient for enhancing the perceived glossiness. Our data show that a retinal-image motion simulating motion parallax without head motion strengthened the perceived glossiness but that its effect was weaker than that of motion parallax with head motion. These results suggest the existence of an additional effect of the cross-modal coordination between vision and proprioception on glossiness perception. That is, motion parallax enhances the perception of glossiness, in addition to retinal-image motions of specular surfaces.

Human Perception: Visual Heuristics in the Perception of Glossiness

New insights into the perception of surface glossiness embody a conceptual change in perception research. Instead of estimating the physical properties of objects, the brain exploits 'invariants'--even though these sometimes make us get the answer wrong.

Difference between Highlight and Object Colors Enhances Glossiness

The effect of highlight and object colors on perception of glossiness was examined. Ten participants rated glossiness of object images. The color coordinates of objects and highlights were varied while luminance of each pixel was unchanged. Four colors were used for objects and highlights. Objects were perceived as glossier when the highlight color was different from the object color than when they were the same. Objects with some unnatural combinations of highlight and object colors were perceived to be as glossy as those with natural color combinations. The results suggested that differences between highlight and object colors enhance perceived glossiness and that perceived glossiness does not depend on naturalness of color combination for highlights and objects.

Localization of human cortical areas underlying glossiness perception: an fMRI study

We conducted two fMRI experiments to clarify what cortical areas are involved in perception of surface glossiness. To dissociate activations caused by glossiness from those caused by low-level features such as luminance and luminance contrast of the stimulus, we utilized the perceptual glossiness constancy (Experiment 1) and the selective attention technique (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, subjects viewed glossy or matte objects under bright or dim illumination. The mean luminance and luminance RMS contrast of glossy objects under dim illumination were lower than those of matte objects under bright illumination. Thus, if certain areas are more activated by the former stimulus than the latter, the activation differences can be explained by the differences in surface glossiness but not by the differences in mean luminance or luminance RMS contrast of the stimulus. In Experiment 2, subjects judged whether the paired objects were the same or different in terms of glossiness, 3D form, or 3D orientation. If certain areas are more activated during the glossiness discrimination task than the other two tasks, it is suggested that the areas are involved in glossiness perception. Common areas identified as those involved in glossiness perception in both experiments are bilateral ventral occipital areas.

Perception of Surface Glossiness by Infants Aged 5 to 8 Months

We examined glossiness perception in infants using a preferential looking paradigm. In experiment 1, the images of two doll-shaped objects with matte and glossy surfaces were presented to infants aged 5 to 6 and 7 to 8 months. The results showed that the 7 to 8 month olds, but not the 5 to 6 month olds, looked significantly longer at the glossy object than at the matte object. In experiment 2, we additionally employed an object that was matte and covered with textures of white paint splashes, whose luminance histogram was almost identical to that of the glossy object. The results showed that the 7 to 8 month old infants could discriminate between the glossy object and the textured object even though both had similar luminance histograms. Qualitatively similar results were obtained for simple spheres that did not contain facial features. Therefore, the results of experiments 1 and 2 were not due to differences in the visibility of the dolls' facial features. These findings suggest that 7 to 8 month old infants perceive difference between glossy objects and matte objects on the basis of surface representations.

Effects of head motion and stereo viewing on perceived glossiness

Many of the previous studies on glossiness perception have focused on glossiness from a single stimulus image. However, the essence of glossiness perception should be the estimation of the surface reflectance properties, which can be estimated computationally from luminance obtained at multiple viewpoints. Thus, the human visual system could also compute glossiness based on retinal images at different eye locations, which are caused by the observer's head motion and stereo viewing. We found that perceived glossiness is strongly enhanced by temporal changes of the retinal image caused by the observer's head motion and image differences between the two eyes in stereo viewing. These findings suggest that the human visual system utilizes rational methods for the perception of surface glossiness. Our data also suggest that the combination of multiple retinal images plays an important role in glossiness perception, just as it is assumed to do in 3D shape perception (i.e., 3D shape perception from binocular disparity and that from motion parallax).

Perceived glossiness and lightness under real-world illumination

Color, lightness, and glossiness are perceptual attributes associated with object reflectance. For these perceptual representations to be useful, they must correlate with physical reflectance properties of objects and not be overly affected by changes in illumination or viewing context. We employed a matching paradigm to investigate the perception of lightness and glossiness under geometric changes in illumination. Stimuli were computer simulations of spheres presented on a high-dynamic-range display. Observers adjusted the diffuse and specular reflectance components of a test sphere so that its appearance matched that of a reference sphere simulated under a different light field. Diffuse component matches were close to veridical across geometric changes in light field. In contrast, specular component matches were affected by geometric changes in light field. We tested several independence principles and found (i) that the effect of changing light field geometry on the diffuse component matches was independent of the reference sphere specular component; (ii) that the effect of changing light field geometry on the specular component matches was independent of the reference sphere diffuse component; and (iii) that diffuse and specular components of the match depended only slightly on the roughness of the specular component. Finally, we found that equating simple statistics (i.e., standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis) computed from the luminance histograms of the spheres did not predict the matches: these statistics differed substantially between spheres that matched in appearance across geometric changes in the light field.

Perception of surface glossiness in infants

Perception of surface glossiness in infants

Interaction of diffuse and specular reflectance in the perception of object lightness and glossiness

Interaction of diffuse and specular reflectance in the perception of object lightness and glossiness

Perception of lightness and glossiness under natural light fields

Perception of lightness and glossiness under natural light fields

Highlights and the perception of glossiness.

Beck (1972) published a picture of a vase with and without highlights. The vase with highlights looked glossy. The vase without highlights looked matte. There are two alternative hypotheses concerning the perception of glossiness. One hypothesis is that the perception of glossiness, like the darkening due to contrast, is a spatially local perceptual quality that results from the presence of highlights. The second hypothesis is that the perception of glossiness is the result of a perceptual inference that a surface reflects light specularly based upon the information provided by highlights. The perception of glossiness is the result of both sensations and an inference based on past experience that causes the entire surface to appear glossy. Helmholtz explained the effects of surface texture and finish on the perception of color in these terms (Graham & Brown, 1965). The two hypotheses are examined by studying how the size, brightness, orientation, the placement of highlights, and the intensity gradient on the vase surface affect the perception of glossiness. The rightmost photograph in A of Figure 1 reproduces a digitized picture of the glossy vase in which all highlights were removed. In the left photographs, single highlights are superimposed on the digitized vase pictures. The positions of these highlights correspond to the positions of actual highlights originally on the vase. The vertical and horizontal intensity profiles of these highlights have the shapes of an inverted V and were chosen for computational simplicity. Forbus (Note 1) has shown that the intensity profile of a highlight is not critical as long as it is not discontinuous. The highlights make their surrounding areas look shiny. They fail, however, to make the entire vase look shiny. In B, two highlights are shown. The effects of the individual highlights combine and make the upper part of the vase look shiny. The lower part of the vase, however, continues to look dull. Highlights have a local effect that makes surrounding areas of the vase appear glossy. They do