ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
The non-Riemannian nature of perceptual color space.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Harmonious color pairings: Insights from human preference and natural hue statistics.iScience · 2026Article
- Perceptual resolution of ambiguity: A divisive normalization account for both interocular color grouping and difference enhancement.Journal of vision · 2026Article
- Article
- The origin of color categories.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Evaluation of Color Difference Models for Wide Color Gamut and High Dynamic Range.Journal of imaging · 2024Article
- Dissecting the components of error in analogue report tasks.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Identifying images in the biology literature that are problematic for people with a color-vision deficiency.eLife · 2024Article
- Quantum-like Qualia hypothesis: from quantum cognition to quantum perception.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Article
- Maximum likelihood estimation of difference scaling functions for suprathreshold judgments.Journal of vision · 2022Article
- Proximity matters.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
The scientific community generally agrees on the theory, introduced by Riemann and furthered by Helmholtz and Schrödinger, that perceived color space is not Euclidean but rather, a three-dimensional Riemannian space. We show that the principle of diminishing returns applies to human color perception. This means that large color differences cannot be derived by adding a series of small steps, and therefore, perceptual color space cannot be described by a Riemannian geometry. This finding is inconsistent with the current approaches to modeling perceptual color space. Therefore, the assumed shape of color space requires a paradigm shift. Consequences of this apply to color metrics that are currently used in image and video processing, color mapping, and the paint and textile industries. These metrics are valid only for small differences. Rethinking them outside of a Riemannian setting could provide a path to extending them to large differences. This finding further hints at the existence of a second-order Weber–Fechner law describing perceived differences.
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