The Effects of Neighboring Colors on Color Appearance

Abstract

Every day, people don’t perceive one color independently, but perceive many neighboring colors simultaneously. Most color studies regarding color appearance were done based on a single color. There are also earlier studies conducted on neighboring colors. However, it is not sufficient to focus on the effect of neighboring colors which color attribute affect the color appearance. Therefore, the effects of neighboring colors on color appearance need to be investigated. The research aimed to investigate how neighboring colors effect on color appearance. Color appearance experiment was carried out in the dark room by using a viewing booth. Total of 5 different neighboring color conditions were used in the experiment and those were ‘Reference Condition’, ‘Desaturated’, ‘Saturated’, ‘Dark’, and ‘Light’. Total of 20 participants were invited to each neighboring color condition. Each participant evaluated Hue, Colorfulness, and Lightness of 22 test colors by using magnitude estimation method. To analyze the data, all participants’ responses were averaged by using arithmetic mean. Then the experiment results were analyzed according to neighboring color conditions. Furthermore the results were compared with the estimated results of two different color appearance models, CIELAB and CIECAM02, respectively. As for the findings of the experiment, Hue, Colorfulness, and Lightness tended to be affected by neighboring colors. First, Colorfulness was evaluated higher when neighboring colors were desaturated. Both Colorfulness and Lightness of test colors tended to be evaluated lower when neighboring colors were lighter. Hue was affected when neighboring colors were light. The results were compared with estimated color appearance values of CIELAB and CIECAM02. In overall, CIECAM02 showed better performance than CIELAB. The performances of both models tended to be worse as the neighboring color condition became extreme in a specific color attribute, especially when estimating Colorfulness and Lightness. The degree of color appearance changes was compared between experimental results and CIECAM02 values of ‘Reference Condition’ and ‘Light’. In the result, CIECAM02 model could not estimate the Colorfulness and Lightness changes according to neighboring color conditions sufficiently and it estimated the changes less than experimental results in both Colorfulness and Lightness. Therefore, further research regarding color appearance should be considered more in regards to surrounding environment.