Access

News and Views

Nature 447, 158-159 (10 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature05714; Published online 18 April 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

Visual perception: A gloss on surface properties

Michael S. Landy1

Top

Humans perceive the properties of a surface by interpreting visual input. When estimating gloss and lightness, it seems that neural discrimination of simple image statistics plays a large part.

How do you tell the difference between peaches and nectarines, or between unfinished and polished wood? Many visual attributes help us to distinguish different surface materials, including lightness, colour and texture.

  1. Michael S. Landy is in the Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, New York 10003, USA.
    Email: landy@nyu.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.