Lightness Perception in Complex Scenes

Abstract

Lightness perception is the perception of achromatic surface colors: black, white, and shades of grey. Lightness has long been a central research topic in experimental psychology, as perceiving surface color is an important visual task but also a difficult one due to the deep ambiguity of retinal images. In this article, I review psychophysical work on lightness perception in complex scenes over the past 20 years, with an emphasis on work that supports the development of computational models. I discuss Bayesian models, equivalent illumination models, multidimensional scaling, anchoring theory, spatial filtering models, natural scene statistics, and related work in computer vision. I review open topics in lightness perception that seem ready for progress, including the relationship between lightness and brightness, and developing more sophisticated computational models of lightness in complex scenes.