The Effect of Texture on Brightness Perception in Simulated Scenes

ABSTRACT

It is known that there is a black-white asymmetry in the psychophysical response; this is such that decrements are represented in the visual system by a larger magnitude than increments, that have an equal-magnitude deviation from the background. One interesting prediction arises from this black-white asymmetry that is: an homogeneously textured surface in which each dot belongs to a range of grays, and whose mean luminance is L, will be perceived as darker than a uniform surface with the same luminance L. We propose to explore this effect and analyze its potential consequences on the brightness perception of surfaces in illuminated scenes. For this purpose, we performed two experiments: in the first one, we showed that the texture biases the perception of surface brightness. In the second one, we showed, by testing the effect on simulated 3D realistic scenes, that textured walls are perceived as darker than identically painted walls with soft finish.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual perception
• brightness
• texture

Acknowledgments

We thank Ing. Marcelo de Nóbrega for his help with the computer simulations. We also thank all the volunteers that participate in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas PIP 0545 “La percepción visual y sus aplicaciones en Eficiencia Energética, Deporte y Visión con Objetos Transparentes”, and PUE 0114 “Las dimensiones de la iluminación: el desafío tecnológico y los problemas de la interacción de la luz con el ser humano, los materiales y el ambiente.”