How well can people use different color attributes?

Abstract

Two psychophysical experiments were conducted to analyze the role of color attributes in simple tasks involving color matching and discrimination. In Experiment I observers made color matches using three different adjustment control methods. The results showed that the Lightness, Chroma, Hue (LCH) and the Lightness, redness/ greenness, blueness/yellowness ({L, r/g, y/b}) adjustment controls elicited significantly better performance than the display RGB controls in terms of both accuracy and time, but were not significantly different from each other. Expert observers performed significantly better than naïve observers in terms of accuracy. Experiment II was a replication and extension of the experiment by Melgosa et al. [Color Res Appl 2000; 25: 356 -367] in which observers judged differences and similarities for color attributes in pairs of colored patches. At a 95% confidence level, the results from judging difference were significantly better than those from judging similarity. Hue and Lightness were significantly more identifiable than Chroma, r/g, and y/b. These results indicate that people do not have ready access to the lower level color descriptors such as the common attributes used to define color spaces, and that higher level psychological processing involving cognition and language may be necessary for even apparently simple tasks involving color matching and describing color differences.

Supplementary dataset for color difference evaluation

“…For example when a sample was noticeably more yellowish than a color center DY=+2. In agreement with previous studies 13, 14 our results showed that observers were more sensitive to differences of lightness than to differences of hue, and are much less sensitive to differences of chroma. In a general way, observers had big difficulties to quantify differences of chroma.…”

A Cross‐cultural comparison of saturation, vividness, blackness and whiteness scales

“…This was confirmed by the study by Zhang and Montag. 7 They carried out a colour matching experiment using two sets of scales (lightness/chroma/hue and lightness/yellowness-blueness/redness-greenness).…”

Distance metrics for very large color differences

“…However, a*/b* difference is not separable, and observers could not reliably distinguish changes in chroma from changes in hue. 10 So, if lightness is separable from a*/b*, large color differences might be better calculated in a two-dimensional space that treats lightness differently from chromaticness (a*/b*). One of these dimensions is the lightness difference, and the other is a combined a*/b* difference.…”