Colour statistics of natural and man-made surfaces
The reflectance spectra of natural and man-made surfaces are highly constrained. Statistical analyses have been conducted that confirm that the surface reflectance spectra form a set of band-limited functions with a frequency limit of approximately 0.02 cycles/nm. The reflectance spectra can be represented by a linear-model framework and are adequately described by 6-12 basis functions. However, the spectral properties of surfaces are not so constrained as to allow the human visual system to recover the surface properties from cone excitations. Furthermore, trichromatic colour devices such as scanners and cameras can only capture illumination-specific colour information.
Keywords: Colour; Statistics; Vision
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2000
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content