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Desaturation-Induced Brightness in Face Color Perception.

Hitomi Shimakura¹, Katsuaki Sakata²

¹Shiseido Global Innovation Center, Japan.

|June 21, 2019

Summary

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Keywords:

brightness color face inverted Helmholtz–Kohlrausch effect saturation whiteness

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Area of Science:

Visual perception
Color science
Psychophysics

Background:

The perception of faces differs from non-face objects.
Face brightness is often conflated with whiteness, particularly in the beauty industry.
Limited research exists on the perceptual differences between face brightness and whiteness.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the interplay of color attributes in facial perception.
To measure the effect of saturation on perceived brightness and whiteness in uniform colors and facial images.
To elucidate the relationship between saturation, brightness, and whiteness in face perception.

Main Methods:

Comparative perceptual experiments using uniform color patches and facial images.
Controlled manipulation of color saturation at constant luminance.
Subjective measurements of perceived brightness and whiteness.

Main Results:

Uniform color patches exhibited the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect: increased saturation led to increased perceived brightness.
Facial skin images showed an inverse effect: increased saturation decreased perceived brightness.
This divergence indicates that top-down processing influences color attribute interactions in faces.

Conclusions:

The inverse relationship between saturation and brightness in facial images is influenced by higher-order cognitive mechanisms.
Factors such as face recognition, skin tone color range, luminance distribution, and human skin recognition interact to produce this effect.
Perception of facial attributes is distinct from the perception of simple color stimuli, highlighting the role of contextual information.