Abstract
That color appearance is subject to scene interpretation is shown by images, in which object color distributions may be confused with lighting along the daylight locus. In previous work, we have shown that such images yield striking individual differences in color perception, like those observed with the famous #TheDress. Yet, #TheShoe raises questions about the role of the daylight locus because it seems to produce individual differences even though its color distribution is (approximately) orthogonal to the daylight locus. We wanted to know whether confusions between object and lighting colors occur beyond the daylight locus and yield striking individual differences comparable to those observed with #TheDress. For this, we adapted our algorithm for dress-like images to produce new images with the colors of #TheShoe. We conducted two online studies and a lab study. In these studies, we presented a range of dress-like and shoe-like images and asked observes to describe their colors with color names and to match them through color adjustments. Results strongly confirmed our previous observations of individual differences for a large range of dress-like images, including a #TheShoe version with dress-like colors. Most importantly, we consistently observed across both surveys, systematic individual differences for images with shoe-like colors, including a #TheDress with those colors. These individual differences for images with shoe-like colors were correlated one with another, and with the individual differences observed for #TheDress. These correlations imply that individual differences are systematic across different images. Together, these findings suggest that confusions between object and lighting colors are not bound to the daylight locus but may occur for a large range of images with object color distributions aligned with one hue direction.