Understanding gloss perception through the lens of art: Combining perception, image analysis, and painting recipes of 17th century painted grapes

Francesca di Cicco, Maarten W.A. Wijntjes, Sylvia Pont

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)
193 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

To understand the key image features that we use to infer the glossiness of materials, we analyzed the pictorial shortcuts used by 17th century painters to imitate the optical phenomenon of specular reflections when depicting grapes. Gloss perception of painted grapes was determined via a rating experiment. We computed the contrast, blurriness, and coverage of the grapes' highlights in the paintings' images, inspired by Marlow and Anderson (2013). The highlights were manually segmented from the images, and next the features contrast, coverage, and blurriness were semiautomatically quantified using self-defined algorithms. Multiple linear regressions of contrast and blurriness resulted in a predictive model that could explain 69% of the variance in gloss perception. No effect was found for coverage. These findings are in agreement with the instructions to render glossiness of grapes contained in a 17th century painting manual (Beurs, 1692/in press), suggesting that painting practice embeds knowledge about key image features that trigger specific material percepts.
Original languageEnglish
Article number7
Pages (from-to)1-15
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of vision
Volume19
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • material perception
  • gloss perception
  • paintings
  • image analysis
  • image features
  • OA-Fund TU Delft

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