Color appearance of familiar objects - Effects of object shape, texture, and illumination changes

Aug 23, 2026

People perceive roughly constant surface colors despite major illumination changes. Research on memory colors and color appearance has produced mixed results because experimental methods often entangle perceptual and semantic influences. This study isolates memory-color effects using photographs of fruit under simulated illuminations and observer judgments for either achromatic or typical color settings. Results show systematic biases linked to memory colors, dependence on stimulus naturalness, and robustness across illuminant changes, supporting a role in color constancy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Color constancy problem and existing computational models

Influence of scene statistics and surround structure

Previous experience and memory colors as additional mechanisms

Study rationale and approach

Journal of Vision (2008) 8(5):13, 1–16 [http://journalofvision.org/8/5/13/](http://journalofvision.org/8/5/13/ 1)[ 1](http://journalofvision.org/8/5/13/ 1) Color appearance of familiar objects: Effects of object shape, texture, and illumination changes Maria Olkkonen Thorsten Hansen Karl R. Gegenfurtner Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany Department of Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany People perceive roughly constant surface colors despite large changes in illumination. The familiarity of colors of some natural objects might help achieve this feat through direct modulation of the objects’ color appearance. Research on memory colors and color appearance has yielded controversial results and due to the employed methods has often confounded perceptual with semantic effects. We studied the effect of memory colors on color appearance by presenting photographs of fruit on a monitor under various simulated illuminations and by asking observers to make either achromatic or typical color settings without placing demands on short-term memory or semantic processing. In a control condition, we presented photographs of 3D fruit shapes without texture and 2D outline shapes. We found that (1) achromatic settings for fruit were systematically biased away from the gray point toward the opposite direction of a fruit’s memory color; (2) the strength of the effect depended on the degree of naturalness of the stimuli; and (3) the effect was evident under all tested illuminations, being strongest for illuminations whose chromaticity was closest to the stimulus chromaticity. We conclude that the visual identity of an object has a measurable effect on color perception, and that this effect is robust under illuminant changes, indicating its potential signiﬁcance as an additional mechanism for color constancy. Keywords: color appearance, color constancy, natural objects, memory colors Citation: Olkkonen, M. , Hansen, T. , & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2008) . Color appearance of familiar objects: Effects of object shape, texture, and illumination changes. Journal of Vision, 8(5):13, 1–16, [http://journalofvision.org/8/5/13/](http://journalofvision.org/8/5/13/) , doi:10 . 1167/8 .5.13. Introduction Color signals from object surfaces change substantially with varying illumination. Despite this, color appearance of objects remains roughly constant. Color constancy is not a trivial challenge because an inﬁnite amount of illuminant– reﬂectance combinations could cause the same activity in the three retinal cone photoreceptors (Maloney, 1999; Smithson, 2005) . It has been the goal of a large body of research to determine (1) the conditions under which it is computationally possible to extract the surface reﬂectance from the light coming to the eye (e.g. , Brainard & Freeman, 1997; D’Zmura & Lennie, 1986; Hurlbert & Poggio, 1988; Land & McCann, 1971; Maloney, 1986; Maloney & Wandell, 1986) and (2) the conditions under which humans indeed are, and to what degree, color constant (e.g. , Arend & Reeves, 1986; Brainard & Wandell, 1992; Hansen, Walter, & Gegenfurtner, 2007; Kraft & Brainard, 1999; Yang & Maloney, 2001) . One important regularity in the real world constraining the amount of necessary computations is the approximate invariance of relative cone excitation ratios of surfaces under an illuminant change (Foster & Nascimento 1994; Ives, 1912), which seems to be used by the visual system in certain color constancy tasks (e.g. , Craven & Foster, 1992) . Color constancy models have commonly assumed that the average reﬂectance over the whole scene is neutral or at least known (Maloney, 1999); in these models, color constancy is achieved by using the average light over an extended image region as a reference for illuminant estimation (e.g. , Buchsbaum, 1980; Land, 1983; Land & McCann, 1971) . However, these models work

FAQs

What question does the paper investigate about familiar objects and color perception?

It investigates how memory colors influence perceived color appearance when illumination changes, focusing on whether object identity affects color perception in a robust way.

How were memory-color effects tested in the study?

Observers viewed photographs of fruit on a monitor under simulated illuminations and made achromatic or typical color settings without requiring short-term memory or semantic processing.

What were the main findings regarding achromatic settings and memory colors?

Achromatic settings for fruit were biased away from the gray point toward the opposite direction of the fruit’s memory color, with the effect depending on stimulus naturalness and being present across tested illuminations.

Aug 23, 2026

Uploaded by Ethan Miller