Abstract
Most studies of surface color appearance ignore 3-D illumination
phenomena such as shadows and interreflections. In this paper I
address these phenomena directly. I consider a family of ideal
surfaces, namely spherical concavities excavated from a ground plane
and illuminated under uniform diffuse lighting. The color signal
reflected from such surfaces is described by a simple mathematical
model. I use this model and CIELAB coordinates to perform a parametric
study of how the lightness, hue, and chroma of the reflected color
signal vary with the concavity aperture. I find that interreflections
significantly affect the color appearance of a spherical concavity,
but only if the surface has high lightness.
