Lightness and Brightness and Other Confusions

Figure 15. Visual measuring of nominal (inherent) colour. (After Fridell
Anter 2000)
Psychophysics and perception
There is an ongoing debate on the relationship between psychophysical data
and the perceived world. Can advanced photometry and colorimetry describe
the complexity of perceived qualities or is it impossible to capture human
perceptions in any other way than through perception itself?
The question could be raised on many levels. Basically, there is an agreement
that today’s photometric and colorimetric tools and theories give a good correlation
to visually perceived qualities under certain specific circumstances.
There is also an agreement that they could and should be further developed to
obtain a better correspondence to the functioning of the visual sense. But,
even so, they do not include the effect of spatial or temporal context of perception.
Measurements of isolated qualities are made at discrete points and
the results cannot claim to say much about the perceived totality. The growing
research field of colour appearance strives to include more contextual
factors and could possibly be developed to have a closer correspondence to
perception.
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