The achromatic Mach bands effect is a well-known visual illusion, discovered over a hundred years ago. This effect has been investigated thoroughly, mainly for its brightness aspect. The existence of Chromatic Mach bands, however, has been disputed. In recent years it has been reported that Chromatic Mach bands are not perceived under controlled iso-luminance conditions. However, here we show that a variety of Chromatic Mach bands, consisting of chromatic and achromatic regions, separated by a saturation ramp, can be clearly perceived under iso-luminance and iso-brightness conditions. In this study, observers' eye movements were recorded under iso-brightness conditions. Several observers were tested for their ability to perceive the Chromatic Mach bands effect and its magnitude, across different cardinal and non-cardinal Chromatic Mach bands stimuli. A computational model of color adaptation, which predicted color induction and color constancy, successfully predicts this variation of Chromatic Mach bands. This has been tested by measuring the distance of the data points from the "achromatic point" and by calculating the shift of the data points from predicted complementary lines. The results suggest that the Chromatic Mach bands effect is a specific chromatic induction effect.

An elaborated subjective color model is presented that includes the predictions of emulated Benham disk results and additional predictions that refer to local and remote achromatic illuminations on perceived subjective color shifts. A computer emulated Benham disk pattern was used as a stimulus to test the effects of remote illumination on its color sensation. An analytical model and its predictions are proposed in order to account for the results of the perceived hue shift, when changing either the remote illumination area or the stimulus illumination. This model is based on previous retinal color-coded cells responses whichyield the subjective color, and on local and remote adaptation mechanisms. The similarity between the role and mechanism of remote illumination (achromatic or chromatic) in subjective and perceived color is also discussed.

Vasarely's 'nested-squares' illusion is the perception of a glowing "X" along the diagonals of concentric squares with a luminance gradient. We present here the chromatic Vasarely effect, where the concentric angles have a chromatic gradient, under iso-brightness conditions. The strength of the effect was tested psychophysically by two measures, the length and the color of the illusory folds. The color of the illusory fold is perceived as the complementary color of the color of the nested-squares (or angles). The experimental results show that a large repertoire of stimuli with different colors and angles yielded significantly perceived colors. The results show that the strength of the perceived illusory fold (of both the length and the chroma) is significantly larger at sharper angles of the stimuli. The chromatic first-order adaptation computational model predicts most of the above results.

Achromatic second-order (contrast) Mach bands can be perceived near the contrast ramp between two contrast levels. In this study we show that a repertoire of chromatic second-order Mach bands is also clearly perceived, under equal-luminance conditions (minimum motion technique). The results show that chromatic and achromatic second-order stimuli yield significant perceived second-order Mach bands, with approximately the same relative magnitude. At high spatial frequencies the effect is more prominent for achromatic second-order Mach bands stimuli than for chromatic second-order stimuli. The effect of the chromatic second-order Mach bands is smaller for complementary pairs of colors than for non-complementary pairs of colors. We suggest that the effect of second-order Mach bands is an expression of the mechanism of second-order induction.