Hunt effect (color)

This article is about color appearance effect. For other uses, see Hunt effect (disambiguation).

The Hunt effect or Luminance-on-colorfulness effect^[1] comprises an increase in colorfulness of a color with increasing luminance. The effect was first described by RWG Hunt in 1952.^[2]

In this illustration of the Hunt effect, the four horizontal bands contain the same colors (hue and saturation), yet the brighter bands appear more colorful than the darker ones.

Hunt noted that this effect occurs at low luminance levels. At higher luminance, he noted a hue shift of colors to be more blue with higher luminance, which is now known as the Bezold–Brücke effect. The Hunt effect is related to the Helmholtz–Kohlrausch effect, where a partially desaturated stimulus is seen to be brighter than fully saturated or achromatic stimuli.

See also

• Opponent process
• Purkinje shift
• Abney effect

References

1. Pridmore, Ralph W.; Melgosa, Manuel (10 April 2015). "All Effects of Psychophysical Variables on Color Attributes: A Classification System". PLOS ONE. 10 (4): e0119024. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1019024P. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0119024. PMC 4393130. PMID 25859845.
2. Hunt, R. W. G. (1 March 1952). "Light and Dark Adaptation and the Perception of Color*". Journal of the Optical Society of America. 42 (3): 190–199. doi:10.1364/JOSA.42.000190. PMID 14908745.