Observer Preferences and Cultural Differences in Color Reproduction of Scenic Images

Observer preferences in the color reproduction of pictorial images have been a topic of debate for many years. Through a series of psychophysical experiments we are trying to better understand the differences and trends in observer preferences for pictorial images, determine if cultural biases on preference exist, and finally generate a set of preferred color reproduced images for future experimentation and evaluation. The results yielded that statistical difference between the peaks of preference of image quality may exist between cultures, but that the cultural difference observed is most likely not of practical significance for most applications. The analysis of a second experiment yielded that the intra-observer repeatability of an observer is about half of the variation between observers. Furthermore the analysis demonstrated that preferences on images with faces have a much tighter range of preference in comparison to images without faces.