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Updated: Apr 25, 2026

Visualizing Visual Adaptation
Published on: April 24, 2017
Corresponding color datasets and a chromatic adaptation model based on the OSA-UCS system
Abstract:
Today chromatic adaptation transforms (CATs) are reconsidered, since their mathematical inconsistency has been shown in Color Res. Appl.38, 188 (2013) and by the CIE technical committee TC 8-11: CIECAM02 Mathematics. In 2004-2005 the author proposed an adaptation transform based on the uniform color scale system of the Optical Society of America (OSA-UCS) [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A21, 677 (2004); Color Res. Appl. 30, 31 (2005)] that transforms the cone-activation stimuli into adapted stimuli. The present work considers all the 37 available corresponding color (CC) datasets selected by CIE and (1) shows that the adapted stimuli obtained from CC data are defined up to an unknown transformation, and an unambiguous definition of the adapted stimuli requires additional hypotheses or suitable experimental data (as it is in the OSA-UCS system); (2) produces a CAT, represented by a linear transformation between CCs, associated with any CC dataset, whose high quality measured in ΔE units discards the possibility of nonlinear transformations; (3) analyzes these color-conversion matrices in a heuristic way with a reference adaptation that is approximately that of the OSA-UCS adapted colors for the D65 illuminant and particularly shows accordance with the Hunt effect and the Bezold-Brücke hue shift; (4) proposes the measurements of CC stimuli with a reference adaptation equal to that of the visual situation of the OSA-UCS system for defining adapted colors for any considered illumination adaptation and therefore for defining a general CAT formula.
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