Investigation on effects of adapting chromaticities and luminance on color appearance on computer displays using memory colors

CAT02, the most widely used chromatic adaptation transform to characterize the chromatic adaptation mechanism in the human visual system, includes a factor D to characterize the degree of chromatic adaptation. This factor, however, is only determined by the luminance level of the adapting field and surround. This study was designed to investigate how the change of adapting chromaticities and the simultaneous changes of adapting chromaticities and luminance affect the degree of chromatic adaptation and color appearance on computer displays. The human observers adjusted the color appearance of various familiar objects and cubes on different display backgrounds. A higher degree of chromatic adaptation was found when using familiar objects, which was likely due to the cognitive mechanism. Both the adapting chromaticities and luminance significantly affected the degree of chromatic adaptation, with a lower degree under an adapting condition with a lower adapting correlated color temperature and a lower adapting luminance. In addition, the effect of adapting luminance on colorfulness (known as the Hunt Effect) was likely to be overpredicted in CAM02-UCS, which merits further investigations.