Associating color appearance with the cone chromaticity space
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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
Dingcai Cao1, Joel Pokorny, Vivianne C Smith
1Department of Health Studies, The University of Chicago, 5841 South Maryland Avenue, MC 2007, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Abstract:
A cone chromaticity space, a transform of a colorimetric specification system into coordinates that represent cone excitations, does not provide color appearance information. Boynton and Olson (Color Research and Application 12, 94-105, 1987) gathered color naming for the 424 Optical Society of America Uniform Color Scales (OSA-UCS) color samples. Here, a computational algorithm was developed that converts OSA-UCS sample values into L, M, S cone excitations based on the 1964 CIE 10 degrees Standard Observer. This makes it possible to plot the cone chromaticities associated with the eight color names used by Boynton and Olsen's observers to describe the non-dark appearing colors.
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