I suggested below that there is more going on in the cube illusion than merely the brain making local comparisons of colors relative to their background. I wanted to test this claim out by generating an image that had the same arrangement of colors but without some of the additional cues present in the 3D renderings.
I generated the image below based on a higher res version of the original illusion (at bottom for comparison). The RGB values are the same as in the bottom image. There is still quite a powerful effect but it seems to me that it is indeed less powerful than in the original (specifically the yellow effect on the right is muted for me), suggesting that the visual system is doing something more complex than local color comparisons. I’ve been staring at these images for too long now to be sure of my judgments any more however. What do others think?
I think the tops of the cubes in the 3D picture look brighter because of the “shadow”. Your visual system is imagining a light source coming from the upper right. There’s no such effect in the 2D picture.
Yes, I think this is part of what is happening. I also think my perception of less apparent ‘yellowness’ in the grey tiles in the non-3D version is due to there being fewer cues to lead the visual system to conclude that there is a blue light illuminating the scene.
I suggested below that there is more going on in the cube illusion than merely the brain making local comparisons of colors relative to their background. I wanted to test this claim out by generating an image that had the same arrangement of colors but without some of the additional cues present in the 3D renderings.
I generated the image below based on a higher res version of the original illusion (at bottom for comparison). The RGB values are the same as in the bottom image. There is still quite a powerful effect but it seems to me that it is indeed less powerful than in the original (specifically the yellow effect on the right is muted for me), suggesting that the visual system is doing something more complex than local color comparisons. I’ve been staring at these images for too long now to be sure of my judgments any more however. What do others think?
I think the tops of the cubes in the 3D picture look brighter because of the “shadow”. Your visual system is imagining a light source coming from the upper right. There’s no such effect in the 2D picture.
Yes, I think this is part of what is happening. I also think my perception of less apparent ‘yellowness’ in the grey tiles in the non-3D version is due to there being fewer cues to lead the visual system to conclude that there is a blue light illuminating the scene.