You are viewing the course site for a past offering of this course. The current offering may be found here.
Lecture 23: Color Science (30)
AlexSchedel

I lecture it was talked about how the banana looks yellow in this picture even though it is ostensibly green because we are accommodating the color. Is this a purely mechanical phenomenon of vision or is it also affected by our human knowledge as well? What I mean by that is that, because I know that bananas are yellow, I am going to assume that the banana is yellow. The same goes for the garlic. lemons, and apple in the scene, I know what color they are supposed to be. Is part of the reason I am seeing them that way because of this previous knowledge?

saltyminty

Is this the same reason why putting tints on photos/screens/lenses (ie night shift on computers, strong tints on sunglasses/goggles/etc) doesn't change the color appearance of objects too significantly? Since we tend to adjust to it pretty quickly

Staffyirenng

@AlexSchedel Good point. It is true that human knowledge and contextual expectation can participate in shaping our perception of color. I'm not 100% sure in this case, though I suspect it is not the main effect -- e.g. bananas commonly come in both green and yellow levels of ripeness. In any case, the chromatic adaptation phenomenon shown here occurs even in the absence of contextual clues about what the true colors are.

Staffyirenng

@saltyminty -- yes!

You must be enrolled in the course to comment