Remodelling colour contrast: implications for visual processing and colour representation
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Updated: Oct 21, 2026

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
1Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. a.shepherd@psychology.bbk.ac.uk
Abstract:
Colour contrast describes the influence of one colour on the perception of colours in neighbouring areas. This study addresses two issues: (i) the accurate representation of the colour changes; (ii) the underlying visual mechanisms. Observers viewed a haploscopic display in which a standard display was presented to one eye and a matching display to the other. The matches could be represented accurately using a diagram that is a logarithmic transformation of the MacLeod-Boynton (r, b) (1979) chromaticity diagram. Since haploscopic presentation has been described as isolating retinal processes (Whittle, P., & Challands, P.D.C. (1969). The effect of background luminance on the brightness of flashes. Vision Research, 9, 1095-1110; Chichilnisky, E.J., & Wandell, B.A. (1995). Photoreceptor sensitivity changes explain color appearance shifts induced by large uniform backgrounds in dichoptic matching. Vision Research, 35, 239-254), the results are discussed in terms of receptor sensitivity changes and the ratio of receptor contrasts.
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