Picture perception: An analysis of visual compensation

Rosinski, Richard R.; Mulholland, Timothy; Degelman, Douglas; Farber, James M.

doi:10.3758/bf03198820

Cited by 60 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Kubovy (1986) called it the robustness of perspective. Slanted pictures have since received attention from Gibson (1947), Perkins (1973), Hochberg (1978a), Farber and Rosinski (1978), , Rosinski, Mulholland, Degelman, and Farber (1980), and Lumsden (1980), but none of these authors followed the strategy that 1 present here. La Gournerie's paradox occurs in two forms: The first concerns viewing pictures either nearer or farther than the composition point but along the line extended between that point and (usually) the center of the picture; the second, and by far the more interesting and complex, concerns viewing pictures from the side at any distance.…”

Section: Call It Lamentioning

confidence: 99%

Rigidity in cinema seen from the front row, side aisle.

Cutting¹

1987

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

107

108

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Pictures and cinema seen at a slant present the optics of virtual objects that are distorted and inconsistent with their real counterparts. In particular, it should not be possible for moving objects on slanted film and television screens to be seen as rigid, at least according to rules of linear perspective. Previous approaches to this problem have suggested that some process (perhaps cognitive) rectifies the optics of objects in slanted pictures to derive true shape and preserve shape constancy. The means for this rectification is usually thought to be based on recovery of true screen slant. In three experiments I show that this account is unnecessary and insufficient to explain the perception of rotating, rectangular objects in slanted cinema. I present data in favor of an alternate view, one in which the information is sufficient for perceivers to determine rigidity in an object on slanted screens, at least for parallel projections. In the human visual system, local measurements of objects are apparently made according to protective geometry, in those measurements, small amounts of certain distortions in projection are tolerated. Stimuli that appear nonrigid are ones that violate certain local principles, known as Perkins's laws, of projections of rectangular solids.Eye position is not fixed when one looks at a photograph or painting. A puzzle arises from this fact: Linear perspective, the means of representation in photos and in many works of art, is mathematically correct for only one viewpoint. I call this point the composition point; it is the point from which a photograph was taken (the perpendicular distance from the center of the photograph derived by multiplying the focal length of the lens by the degree of enlargement) or the point from which a linear perspective picture was composed according to the rules of GiambattistaAlberti(e.g., White, 1957).Fortunately, picture viewing is not limited to the composition point. In fact, a large number of positions in front of a picture will serve as reasonable viewpoints, will preserve object identity, and will allow layout within the picture to appear relatively normal. Preservation of phenomenal identity and phenomenal shape of objects in slanted pictures is fortunate, for without them the utility of pictures would be vanishingly small. Nevertheless, both are unpredicted by any theoretical application of linear perspective, and the second of these-the relatively unnoticed distortions in slanted pictures and cinema-is the focus of this article.The puzzle of unnoticed distortions in slanted images was first addressed by La Gournerie in 1859 (Pirenne, 1970);' hence

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Section: Call It Lamentioning

confidence: 99%

Rigidity in cinema seen from the front row, side aisle.

Cutting¹

1987

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

107

108

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“…We are specifically interested in perceived slant. Although some studies have addressed this issue (Rosinski et al 1980;Kubovy 1986) systematic studies for different perspective-specified slants have not been reported.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voluntarily controlled bi–stable slant perception of real and photographed surfaces

Krumina

Pont

et al. 2005

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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We have quantified voluntarily selected perceived slant of real trapezoidal surfaces (a 'reverse-perspective' scene) and their photographed counterparts (pictorial space). The surfaces were slanted about the vertical axis and observers estimated slant relative to the frontal plane. We were particularly interested in those cases in which binocular disparity and monocular perspective provided conflicting slant information. We varied the monocularly and binocularly specified surface slants independently across stimulus presentations. To eliminate texture and shading cues we used sand-blasted aluminium trapezoidal surfaces illuminated from all directions. When disparity-specified slant and perspective-specified slant were conflicting, observers were able to perceive the surfaces in two ways: they perceived either a trapezoid or a rectangle. Our main finding is twofold. First, when subjects chose to perceive the trapezoid, the slant estimates followed the disparitypredicted slant with only a slight underestimation, as if they selected a pure binocular representation of slant governed only by disparity. Second, when subjects chose to perceive the rectangle their estimates for real surfaces were similar to those for photographed surfaces, as if they selected a representation of slant governed by perspective foreshortening.

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“…Researchers who support the compensation hypothesis (e.g., Goldstein, 1979Goldstein, , 1987Kubovy, 1986;Pirenne, 1970;Rosinski, Mulholland, Degelman, & Farber, 1980) have argued that when the picture surface is not visible, perceived pictorial space changes as observers view a picture from different viewpoints. When the picture surface is visible, however, observers see the spatial layout as if they were viewing the picture from its center of projection.…”

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confidence: 99%

Weakening the robustness of perspective: Evidence for a modified theory of compensation in picture perception

Yang

Kubovy

1999

Perception & Psychophysics

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Viewed from the center of projection, a perspective picture presents the pictorial depth information of a scene. Knowing the center of projection, one can reconstruct the depicted scene. Assuming another viewpoint is the center of projection will cause one to reconstruct a transformed scene. Despite these transformations, we appreciate pictures from other viewpoints. The compensation hypothesis states that the visible picture surface allows observers to compensate for transformations by locating the center of projection and experiencing pictorial space from there. Weshow that observers neither completely compensate for nor experience transformations of space as geometry would predict. We propose a modified compensation hypothesis according to which different degrees of visibility of the picture surface invoke different degrees of compensation.Pictures are flat surfaces that show scenes in depth. For the visual system, pictures present the problem ofintegrating conflicting flatness and depth information. Practically, understanding how picture perception resembles or differs from perceiving real space will allow us to create and use spatial displays more effectively. In this paper, we address two problems: (1) how we perceive pictures from different viewpoints even though pictures are geometrically correct for only one viewpoint and (2) how depth information and flatness information interact in perceiving depth in pictures.A picture mimics the light from a scene to one viewpoint, called the center ofprojection. To all other viewpoints, the picture presents a geometrically transformed pictorial space. However, experience suggests that we can appreciate pictures from many viewpoints. Kubovy (1986) has called this phenomenon the robustness ofperspective. Some researchers (e.g., Goldstein, 1987;Kubovy, 1986;Pirenne, 1970; have proposed that robustness results because seeing the picture surface allows observers to compensate for these transformations ofpictorial space. That is, observers perceive the layout of pictorial space as if they were viewing the This research was supported by Grant MH 47317 to M.K., principal investigator. The authors thank Jake Mazulewicz, Anu Kesari, and Albert Downs for their able help in conducting the experiment, and Ron Simmons for building the apparatus. The authors also thank Marco Bertamini for discussions on the nature of explanations and descriptions, Hal Sedgwick for his thoughts on cross-talk, the visual world, and the visual field, Denny Proffitt for his thoughts on "compellingness" in pictures, movies at SIGGRAPH, and registered variables, and Marco Bertamini and Mukul Bhalla for their suggestions, which greatly improved this paper. Correspondence should be addressed to T. Yang or M. Kubovy, Department of Psychology, Gilmer Hall, University ofVirginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2477 (e-mail: yang@virginia.edu or kubovy@virginia.edu).picture from the center of projection. We call this explanation the compensation theory ofperspective robustness.In this paper, we present two versio...

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Picture perception: An analysis of visual compensation

Cited by 60 publications

References 9 publications

Rigidity in cinema seen from the front row, side aisle.

Rigidity in cinema seen from the front row, side aisle.

Voluntarily controlled bi–stable slant perception of real and photographed surfaces

Weakening the robustness of perspective: Evidence for a modified theory of compensation in picture perception

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