Visibility of borders: separate and combined effects of color differences, luminance contrast, and luminance level

The strength of the border between two regions was assessed by measuring the tendency of the border to disappear during a 5-min fixation period. We measured the total time the border was judged visible when subjects viewed two hemifields with different chromaticities (six wavelength pairs), five luminance contrasts, or with differences in both, at five levels of luminance. For a homochromatic field, border visibility increased linearly with the logarithm of the luminance contrast, regardless of the particular wavelength of the field. For fields with only chromatic differences, border visibility increased linearly with the logarithm of the tritanopic-purity difference (the relative activity of only the long- and middle-wavelength-sensitive cones). For all borders, visibility increased with an increase in luminance level. Thus borders formed by the combination of chromatic differences and luminance contrasts are more visible than borders that have the same chromatic difference or the same luminance contrast alone. For any chromatic difference, calculations of a luminance contrast that would yield the same border visibility were made. These equivalent luminance-contrast functions for border visibility provide a metric for chromatic differences across a range of luminances that allows chromatic and luminance-contrast sensitivities to be compared in a nonarbitrary way. Relative to chromatic differences, luminance contrast is less effective in maintaining border visibility at lower luminance levels. When the borders combine both chromatic differences and luminance contrasts, a root-mean-square model can be used to account for the data. This is consistent with the idea that chromatic and luminance systems make independent contributions to the visibility of borders.