Abstract: Color constancy (the ability to perceive colors relatively stable under different illuminants) is the result of several mechanisms spread across different neural levels and responding to several visual scene cues. It is usually measured by estimating the perceived color of a grey patch under an illuminant change. In this work, we hypothesize whether chromatic adaptation (without a reference white or grey) could be driven by certain colors, specifically those corresponding to the universal color terms proposed by Berlin and Kay (1969). To this end we have developed a new psychophysical paradigm in which subjects adjust the color of a test patch (in CIELab space) to match their memory of the best example of a given color chosen from the universal terms list (grey, red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, orange and brown). The test patch is embedded inside a Mondrian image and presented on a calibrated CRT screen inside a dark cabin. All subjects were trained to “recall” their most exemplary colors reliably from memory and asked to always produce the same basic colors when required under several adaptation conditions. These include achromatic and colored Mondrian backgrounds, under a simulated D65 illuminant and several colored illuminants. A set of basic colors were measured for each subject under neutral conditions (achromatic background and D65 illuminant) and used as “reference” for the rest of the experiment. The colors adjusted by the subjects in each adaptation condition were compared to the reference colors under the corresponding illuminant and a “constancy index” was obtained for each of them. Our results show that for some colors the constancy index was better than for grey. The set of best adapted colors in each condition were common to a majority of subjects and were dependent on the chromaticity of the illuminant and the chromatic background considered.

Abstract: The characterization of trichromatic cameras is usually done in terms of a device-independent color space, such as the CIE 1931 XYZ space. This is indeed convenient since it allows the testing of results against colorimetric measures. We have characterized our camera to represent human cone activation by mapping the camera sensor's (RGB) responses to human (LMS) through a polynomial transformation, which can be “customized” according to the types of scenes we want to represent. Here we present a method to test the accuracy of the camera measures and a study on how the choice of training reflectances for the polynomial may alter the results.

Abstract: A significative percentage of the human population suffer from impairments in their capacity to distinguish or even see colours. For them, everyday tasks like navigating through a train or metro network map becomes demanding. We present a novel technique for extracting colour information from everyday natural stimuli and presenting it to visually impaired users as pleasant, non-invasive sound. This technique was implemented inside a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) portable device. In this implementation, colour information is extracted from the input image and categorised according to how human observers segment the colour space. This information is subsequently converted into sound and sent to the user via speakers or headphones. In the original implementation, it is possible for the user to send its feedback to reconfigure the system, however several features such as these were not implemented because the current technology is limited.We are confident that the full implementation will be possible in the near future as PDA technology improves.

Abstract: Understanding how colour is used by the human vision system is a widely studied research field. The field, though quite advanced, still faces important unanswered questions. One of them is the explanation of the unique hues and the assignment of color names. This problem addresses the fact of different perceptual status for different colors.
Recently, Philipona and O'Regan have proposed a biological model that allows to extract the reflection properties of any surface independently of the lighting conditions. These invariant properties are the basis to compute a singularity index that predicts the asymmetries presented in unique hues and basic color categories psychophysical data, therefore is giving a further step in their explanation.
In this paper we build on their formulation and propose a new singularity index. This new formulation equally accounts for the location of the 4 peaks of the World colour survey and has two main advantages. First, it is a simple elegant numerical measure (the Philipona measurement is a rather cumbersome formula). Second, we develop a colour-based explanation for the measure.

Abstract: Convolutional Neural Networks have been proposed as suitable frameworks to model biological vision. Some of these artificial networks showed representational properties that rival primate performances in object recognition. In this paper we explore how color is encoded in a trained artificial network. It is performed by estimating a color selectivity index for each neuron, which allows us to describe the neuron activity to a color input stimuli. The index allows us to classify whether they are color selective or not and if they are of a single or double color. We have determined that all five convolutional layers of the network have a large number of color selective neurons. Color opponency clearly emerges in the first layer, presenting 4 main axes (Black-White, Red-Cyan, Blue-Yellow and Magenta-Green), but this is reduced and rotated as we go deeper into the network. In layer 2 we find a denser hue sampling of color neurons and opponency is reduced almost to one new main axis, the Bluish-Orangish coinciding with the dataset bias. In layers 3, 4 and 5 color neurons are similar amongst themselves, presenting different type of neurons that detect specific colored objects (e.g., orangish faces), specific surrounds (e.g., blue sky) or specific colored or contrasted object-surround configurations (e.g. blue blob in a green surround). Overall, our work concludes that color and shape representation are successively entangled through all the layers of the studied network, revealing certain parallelisms with the reported evidences in primate brains that can provide useful insight into intermediate hierarchical spatio-chromatic representations.

Abstract: Color constancy is usually measured by achromatic setting, asymmetric matching, or color naming paradigms, whose results are interpreted in terms of indexes and models that arguably do not capture the full complexity of the phenomenon. Here we propose a new paradigm, chromatic setting, which allows a more comprehensive characterization of color constancy through the measurement of multiple points in color space under immersive adaptation. We demonstrated its feasibility by assessing the consistency of subjects' responses over time. The paradigm was applied to two-dimensional (2-D) Mondrian stimuli under three different illuminants, and the results were used to fit a set of linear color constancy models. The use of multiple colors improved the precision of more complex linear models compared to the popular diagonal model computed from gray. Our results show that a diagonal plus translation matrix that models mechanisms other than cone gain might be best suited to explain the phenomenon. Additionally, we calculated a number of color constancy indices for several points in color space, and our results suggest that interrelations among colors are not as uniform as previously believed. To account for this variability, we developed a new structural color constancy index that takes into account the magnitude and orientation of the chromatic shift in addition to the interrelations among colors and memory effects.