Perceptual scales for chromatic and luminance blur in noise textures

© 2015 ARVO. We have measured the relative perceptual scales for chromatic and luminance blur in dense textures comprised of color and luminance Gabors, using a modification of the method of paired comparisons. We find that the rate at which perceived blur grows with physical blur, when normalized to 1.0 for luminance, is 0.2 for red-green and 0.06 for blue-yellow blur. It is argued that the relatively severely compressed perceptual scales for red-green and blue-yellow blur are a contributary factor to the observation that when the color but not luminance layer of an image of a natural scene is blurred, there is little or no impression of blur (Wandell, 1995).