Lightness Constancy in Surface Visualization.

ABSTRACT: Color is a common channel for displaying data in surface visualization, but is affected by the shadows and shading used to convey surface depth and shape. Understanding encoded data in the context of surface structure is critical for effective analysis in a variety of domains, such as in molecular biology. In the physical world, lightness constancy allows people to accurately perceive shadowed colors; however, its effectiveness in complex synthetic environments such as surface visualizations is not well understood. We report a series of crowdsourced and laboratory studies that confirm the existence of lightness constancy effects for molecular surface visualizations using ambient occlusion. We provide empirical evidence of how common visualization design decisions can impact viewers' abilit

SUBMITTER: Szafir DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4982670 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature