Image statistics and the perception of surface qualities

Isamu Motoyoshi (), Shin'ya Nishida, Lavanya Sharan and Edward H. Adelson
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Isamu Motoyoshi: Human and Information Science Lab, NTT Communication Science Labs, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, 3-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya, Atsugi, 243-0198, Japan
Shin'ya Nishida: Human and Information Science Lab, NTT Communication Science Labs, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, 3-1 Morinosato-Wakamiya, Atsugi, 243-0198, Japan
Lavanya Sharan: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 43 Vassar Street, 46-4115, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Edward H. Adelson: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 43 Vassar Street, 46-4115, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Nature, 2007, vol. 447, issue 7141, 206-209

Abstract: Texture is skin deep We can easily tell whether an object is made of pewter or plaster, or whether wood is unfinished or polished, by observing the light/dark and shiny/matt qualities of the surface. This involves a chicken-and-egg problem. To infer reflective qualities of a three-dimensional surface, we need detailed information about the shape and the illumination, but inferring each of these components requires knowledge of the others. Motoyoshi et al. have cracked the code, and in doing so they give pointers that could be useful to developers of robotic vision systems and to computer animators creating realistic scenes. The key is some simple image statistics: our perception of glossiness is determined by the amount of positive skew in the distribution of the luminance values in an image.

Date: 2007
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DOI: 10.1038/nature05724

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