Do people match surface reflectance fundamentally differently than they match emitted light?
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Measuring Spatially- and Directionally-varying Light Scattering from Biological Material
Published on: May 20, 2013
Jeroen J M Granzier1, Eli Brenner, Jeroen B J Smeets
1Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. j_granzier@hotmail.com
Abstract:
We compared matches between colours that were both presented on a computer monitor or both as pieces of paper, with matching the colour of a piece of paper with a colour presented on a computer monitor and vice versa. Performance was specifically poor when setting an image on a computer monitor to match the colour of a piece of paper. This cannot be due to any of the individual judgments because subjects readily selected a matching piece of paper to match another piece of paper and set the image on the monitor to match another image on a monitor. We propose that matching the light reaching the eye and matching surface reflectance are fundamentally different judgments and that subjects can sometimes but not always choose which to match.
Related Concept Videos
Radiation: Applications
The average...
Interaction of EM Radiation with Matter: Spectroscopy
Pigmentation
Melanin occurs in two primary forms: eumelanin that provides black and brown pigment and pheomelanin that provides red color. Dark-skinned individuals produce more melanin than those with pale...
Color Vision
Emission Spectra
Photoreceptors and Visual Pathways

