When things don't look the same

What is it about?

If two surfaces in a scene look the same at one moment, will they look different later? A common assumption in studies of surface color matching is that only the overall color or spectrum of the lighting changes. This study used hyperspectral outdoor images to show that natural lighting changes cause mismatches far more often than simple spectral changes. Changes in lighting geometry are more important than changes in spectra alone.

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Photo by Ainsley Myles on Unsplash

Photo by Ainsley Myles on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Outdoors, natural lighting changes are more uneven, complex, and unpredictable than changes in the spectrum of the illumination. Real world lighting changes may well impair how we identify surfaces by their color.