The loci of achromatic points in a real environment under various illuminant chromaticities

Under colored illumination, the achromatic point (the point in the chromaticity diagram seen as colorless) shifts toward the chromaticity of the illuminant. This investigation measured the loci of achromatic points for various intensities of a test field presented in a real rather than a simulated environment, lit by illuminants of various chromaticities. The achromatic point varied markedly with the intensity level of the test field: for dim test fields it was close to the surround chromaticity, but for high luminance test fields it was almost invariant with the surround chromaticity. The varying achromatic settings imply a variation in the relative effectiveness of the different cone types, but this variation originates in the postreceptoral system rather than at the photoreceptors themselves: flicker photometric sensitivity was almost independent of the illuminant in all cases. Nor does the variation take the simple form of a sensitivity-scaling coefficient; such a model can not predict the observed dependence of the achromatic setting on test intensity. The data could, however, be modeled with a scheme in which the log of the relative cone weight implicit in the achromatic setting depends almost linearly on (1) the log of the relative cone excitation by the illuminant and (2) the log of the test field intensity.