Essential to sensory processing in the human visual system is natural illumination, which can vary considerably not only across space but also along the day depending on the atmospheric conditions and the sun's position in the sky. In this work, edges derived from the three postreceptoral Luminance, Red-Green, and Blue-Yellow signals were computed from hyperspectral images of natural scenes rendered with daylights of Correlated Color Temperatures (CCTs) from 2735 to 25,889 K; for low CCT, the same analysis was performed using Planckian illuminants up to 800 K. It was found that average luminance and chromatic edge contrasts were maximal for low correlated color temperatures and almost constants above 10,000 K. The magnitude of these contrast changes was, however, only about 2% across the tested daylights. Results suggest that the postreceptoral opponent and nonopponent color vision mechanisms produce almost constant responses for color edge detection under natural illumination.
© 2012 Optical Society of America