Adaptation reduces perceptual effects of inter-observer metamerism with narrow-band primaries
Abstract
Narrow-band display primaries increase observer metamerism, but to what extent does chromatic adaptation mitigate the perceptual consequences of these effects? We simulated 10,000 individualized observers viewing real-world reflectances under varied illuminants and optimized a virtual RGB display to reproduce each observer’s cone excitations. Between-observer disagreement was quantified using ΔE′ in CAM16-UCS. Without adaptation, metamerism increased as primaries narrowed, reaching a median ΔE′ of 4.8. Increasing adaptation reduced metamerism monotonically: complete adaptation reduced observers’ ΔE′ by a median of 40–67%, with the largest proportional reduction for the narrowest primaries. Adaptation to shared stimuli may therefore align visual experiences across individuals.
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BibTeX
@misc{morimoto2026adaptation,
title = {{Adaptation reduces perceptual effects of inter-observer metamerism with narrow-band primaries}},
author = {Takuma Morimoto and Allie C. Schneider and Hannah Smithston},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/swqc7_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/swqc7_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Adaptation reduces perceptual effects of inter-observer metamerism with narrow-band primaries
AU - Takuma Morimoto
AU - Allie C. Schneider
AU - Hannah Smithston
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/swqc7_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/swqc7_v1/
AB - Narrow-band display primaries increase observer metamerism, but to what extent does chromatic adaptation mitigate the perceptual consequences of these effects? We simulated 10,000 individualized observers viewing real-world reflectances under varied illuminants and optimized a virtual RGB display to reproduce each observer’s cone excitations. Between-observer disagreement was quantified using ΔE′ in CAM16-UCS. Without adaptation, metamerism increased as primaries narrowed, reaching a median ΔE′ of 4.8. Increasing adaptation reduced metamerism monotonically: complete adaptation reduced observers’ ΔE′ by a median of 40–67%, with the largest proportional reduction for the narrowest primaries. Adaptation to shared stimuli may therefore align visual experiences across individuals.
ER -