Failure of color constancy for high luminance of a test patch that appears unnatural as an object in a space

The theory of the recognized visual space of illumination (RVSI) is that the color appearance of objects in a space is determined in relation to its recognition axis RX whose direction is determined by the brain action to adapt to the illumination in the space. Thus the color constancy holds. RX is applicable to objects in the space but not to an object or a portion that does not belong in the space in terms of illumination, that is to say, the luminance of which is too high based on the illumination for that space. In that case the color appearance would be determined in relation to the fundamental axis FX and the color constancy would not hold. In the present paper the chromaticity points were measured for a test patch that appeared achromatic for various luminance of the patch. The points were close to the color of illumination to indicate the color constancy when the luminance was low enough to assure its appearance as the object color, but they departed from the color of illumination and approached the colorimetrically achromatic color. The color constancy gradually failed for the test patch with the high luminance when the color mode became an unnatural object color and then a light color.     

The Brain Adaptation to the Color of Illumination and not the Retinal Adaptation to the Color of Objects that Determines the Color Appearance of an Object in the Space

Color appearance was measured for a test patch which was placed in a test room illuminated by the daylight type of illumination and was looked at from the subject room illuminated by one of the four colored illuminations, red, yellow, green, and blue, through a window of three different sizes. When the window was the smallest so that only the test patch was seen within the window the color of the test patch appeared almost opponent to the illumination color, but as soon as something is seen within the window of larger size the color returned to the original color of the test patch to indicate the color constancy. To recognize the test room as a space was essential to perceive the real color of the test patch. This returning to the original colors was not influenced by green color of objects densely placed in the test room or by red color of objects again densely placed in the test room. The results imply that the color appearance of the test patch is not determined by the retinal chromatic adaptation, but by the brain adaptation to color of the illumination in the space.     

Color Appearance Determined by Recognition of Space

The color appearance was measured for a test patch which was placed in a test room illuminated by daylight lamps and was looked at from a subject room illuminated by one of four colored illuminations, red, yellow, green and blue, through windows of various sizes. When the window was small so that only the test patch was seen within the window the color of the test patch appeared almost opponent to the illumination color, but as soon as something was seen within the window of a larger size the color returned to the original color of the test patch. To recognize the test room as a space was essential to perceive the real color of the test patch. The results were explained by the concept of the recognized visual space of illumination.