Back to articles
Articles
Volume: 8 | Article ID: art00005
Image
The Appearance of Brightness and Lightness
  DOI :  10.2352/CIC.2000.8.1.art00005  Published OnlineJanuary 2000
Abstract

In simplest terms, brightness is the appearance of luminance and lightness is the appearance of objects. The experiments in this paper measure the appearance of three visible faces of a real cube in real-life illumination. Three faces of the cube are painted white and the other three are painted different shades of gray. When the observer sees three white faces the experiment measures the appearance of illumination. When the experimenter rotates the cube to make visible a face with a different reflectance in the same illumination, then the experiment measures the appearance of objects.The results of matching experiments show that humans make the same match for luminance changes caused by illumination as those caused by reflectance. Humans can successfully recognize changes in whites due to illumination. They mistakenly interpret reflectance changes as illuminant position changes. However, in the same image they make the same matches for dark areas that were caused by illumination, reflectance or both.

Subject Areas :
Views 15
Downloads 0
 articleview.views 15
 articleview.downloads 0
  Cite this article 

John J. McCann, "The Appearance of Brightness and Lightnessin Proc. IS&T 8th Color and Imaging Conf.,  2000,  pp 18 - 23,  https://doi.org/10.2352/CIC.2000.8.1.art00005

 Copy citation
  Copyright statement 
Copyright © Society for Imaging Science and Technology 2000
72010350
Color and Imaging Conference
color imaging conf
2166-9635
Society of Imaging Science and Technology
7003 Kilworth Lane, Springfield, VA 22151, USA