Appraisal of Land’s Work on Two-Primary Colour Projections

Abstract

An analysis of the results of Land's experiments with two-primary colour projections has been carried out in terms of the known phenomena of object-colour perception. It is shown that no new theory is required for the prediction of Land’s result that two-primary colour projections can produce object-colour perceptions of all hues; nor for his result that many choices of pairs of primaries yield substantially the same object-colour perceptions. Land’s hypothesis that when the colours of the patches of light making up a scene are restricted to a one-dimensional variation of any sort, the observer usually perceives the objects in that scene as essentially without hue, is new; several special cases of it are supported by previous work as well as Land's. This hypothesis deserves the serious attention of research workers in object-colour perception.