Appearance harmony of materials using real objects and displayed images

Abstract

In the present study, we investigated the appearance harmony of various materials by conducting psychophysical experiments to collect quantitative data. We conducted three experiments using 435 round-robin pairs of 30 samples made from 10 actual materials. In the first experiment, subjects were allowed to tilt the pair of samples to obtain a comprehensive judgment of harmony based on the reflectance properties of the actual surface, in addition to the surface appearance. In the second experiment, the samples were placed such that their surfaces and the viewing direction were perpendicular to the subject. In the third experiment, static sample images were displayed on a monitor. Our results indicated that the sample pairs with similar surface properties were viewed as harmonious, although their materials were different. Indeed, the appearance harmony of the materials differed among static real samples, tilted samples, and the displayed static images. In particular, the appearance harmony of some materials was affected significantly by the reactions of the subjects to the visual information regarding the samples with/without observing the monitor, rather than by the tilting of a sample. The results of a principal component analysis indicated that the harmony among categories of glossy or transparent materials was more likely to change, especially when the materials were displayed as images.