Previous colour-constancy studies have shown that the colour of a test surface varies as a function of both the illumination and the image surfaces. I investigated to what extent the same illuminant change induces the same illuminant adjustment under varying image surfaces. When investigating simultaneous colour constancy, subjects saw CRT simulations of two identical surface collections side by side which were differently illuminated.
Subjects set matches for several surface collections, both appearance and surface colour matches.
In both types of situations and for both types of colour matches, the settings revealed effects of illumination and image surfaces. Although the illuminant adjustment varied with image surfaces, the amount of variation was small. These results indicate that, at least in the situations employed, image surfaces play only a minor role for the illuminant adjustment of our visual system.