Effects of window sizes on color appearance of test patches under colored illumination

Abstract

This experiment is based on the concept of Recognized Visual Space of Illumination (RVSI) and aims to investigate the effect of window size on the color appearance of the test patch under colored illumination. The color appearance was judged by elementary color naming for the test patch which was placed in a test room illuminated by one of eight colored illuminations, four red illuminations of different saturation and four yellow illuminations of different saturation. Subject observed the test patch from a subject room illuminated by fluorescent lamps of daylight type through window of various sizes. Five subjects participated in the experiment. We found that when the window was small so that only the test patch was seen within the window the color appearance of the test patch shifted into the direction of color of illumination, but when the window size was enlarged so that the subject could see some objects in the test room the color appearance returned to its original color in most cases. However when we used the test room illumination of the maximum saturation, the color appearance of test patches did not returned to their original color implying that the color constancy fail for this extreme room illumination.