Chromatic Adaptation Mechanisms Revealed Through Memory Color Assessments Under Varying CCT and Duv Adaptation Conditions

ABSTRACT Much of the current research on display chromatic adaptation has predominantly used neutral colors as stimuli, while memory colors—critical for natural scene perception but under‐researched—have been largely overlooked. Memory colors refer to the typical colors that are consistently associated with familiar objects in long‐term memory (e.g., sky blue, skin tones). Given that users primarily interact with chromatic images rather than uniform neutral fields, distinct adaptation mechanisms may exist for these two stimulus categories. This study systematically investigates human chromatic adaptation to computer displays under 20 controlled adaptation conditions (correlated color temperature, CCT, from 2890 to 9000 K in five steps; deviation from the Planckian locus, Duv, from −0.02 to +0.02 in four steps) using both neutral and memory color stimuli. The results revealed that the degree of chromatic adaptation for both neutral and memory colors increased with higher CCT and that the relative magnitude of the D values for both types of stimuli was modulated by stimulus luminance. For the conditions with a same CCT, a Duv of +0.02 was found to provide a higher degree of chromatic adaptation, which differs from the findings in studies with neutral colors. The results were also used as corresponding colors to derive models of the degree of chromatic adaptation.