Twisted Paths in Color Space J Koenderink, A van Doorn, V Ekroll |
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Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
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| In many computer applications a user has to produce a color. On a laptop this conventionally implies a “color picker”. Color pickers allow the user to trace a path to some color Q, of course, starting from some (arbitrary) color P. The user traverses a path from P to Q in color space. In doing this, the user is constantly aware of the visually present color (some color R say) and the imagined target color Q, the starting color P being a thing of the past. The choosen direction of advance in color space at any moment depends upon the color picker’s interface and on the abilities of the observer. We monitor orbits (both in colorspace and time) taken by observers to move – as efficiently as they can – between pairs of locations in color space. We find spectacular differences between interfaces. We interpret this in terms of the degree to which the interface approximates the observer’s “natural mental image” of color space. This type of study yields a novel and very detailed insight into the structure of “mental color spaces”. |
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