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Perceived food quality under metameric vs. chromatic illumination changes

Lookup NU author(s): Ilgin Cebioglu, Professor Anya Hurlbert

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

The colour appearance of natural objects conveys information about their material properties that guides behaviour yet varies with factors both intrinsic and extrinsic to the object. The latter include variations in illumination and viewing context, which affect the range of colour appearances that are perceived as natural for diagnostically coloured familiar objects (their memory colours). Here, we ask how characteristics of the illumination spectral power distribution – specifically the jaggedness of the spectral profile, related to the colour fidelity index R_f, and the correlated colour temperature - influence the range of perceived natural colour appearances for familiar, diagnostically coloured fruits. Participants viewed real naturalistic fruits in an immersive chamber solely illuminated by spectrally tuneable lamps and selected the illumination under which the fruits looked most natural by smoothly modulating the illumination spectra along either a 6500K metameric axis (constant chromaticity and illuminance, changing spectral profile) or a daylight axis (broadband spectral profile, changing in chromaticity along the daylight locus). For the daylight condition, naturalness judgements were skewed towards warmer lights (∼4000K). For the metameric modulation, naturalness judgements encompassed a range of CCTs and corresponding object colour appearances but tended to skew towards less jagged, higher colour fidelity illumination spectra. Our results show that participants accept appearances under non-broadband illuminations and prefer warmer CCTs for naturalness of specific familiar fruits, with implications for commercial display applications and experimental paradigms.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Cebioglu I, Nuttall P, Pollard N, Potts L, Hurlbert A

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Physics: Conference Series

Year: 2025

Volume: 3128

Pages: 012022

Online publication date: 05/11/2025

Acceptance date: 02/10/2025

Date deposited: 20/11/2025

ISSN (print): 1742-6588

ISSN (electronic): 1742-6596

Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/3128/1/012022

DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/3128/1/012022

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