Mapping luminance onto lightness in vision and art

Alan Gilchrist

doi:10.1117/12.2013205

Abstract

Most natural images span a large range of luminance values, often a thousand-to-one and sometimes a million-to-one (Heckaman and Fairchild, 2009). This luminance range must be mapped by the visual system onto a scale of perceived gray shades (called lightness) with a range of roughly thirty-to-one (90% to 3% reflectance). For the painter who wants to represent this scene on a canvas, the challenge is a bit different. The high-range scene must be represented using pigments with a range of only thirty-to-one. Let’s begin with vision. Even without a high range in the scene, understanding the mapping of luminance onto lightness has proven elusive. But we can think of the problem as having two parts: Anchoring and scaling.

Citation Download Citation

Alan Gilchrist, Alan Gilchrist, "Mapping luminance onto lightness in vision and art", Proc. SPIE 8651, Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XVIII, 865105 (14 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2013205; https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2013205

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