The Effect of Texture on Brightness Perception in Simulated Scenes

ABSTRACT It is known that there is a black-white asymmetry in the psychophysical response; this is such that decrements are represented in the visual system by a larger magnitude than increments, that have an equal-magnitude deviation from the background. One interesting prediction arises from this black-white asymmetry that is: an homogeneously textured surface in which each dot belongs to a range of grays, and whose mean luminance is L, will be perceived as darker than a uniform surface with the same luminance L. We propose to explore this effect and analyze its potential consequences on the brightness perception of surfaces in illuminated scenes. For this purpose, we performed two experiments: in the first one, we showed that the texture biases the perception of surface brightness. In the second one, we showed, by testing the effect on simulated 3D realistic scenes, that textured walls are perceived as darker than identically painted walls with soft finish.