Convincing stuff: Disclosing perceptually-relevant cues for the depiction of materials in 17th century paintings

This thesis explores convincing stuff depicted in 17th century paintings, with the primary aim of understanding their visual perception. ”Stuff” is the term first introduced by Edward Adelson in 2001 to differentiate materials from objects, and to call attention on the research gap in material perception. In an interesting parallel, the...

Understanding gloss perception through the lens of art: Combining perception, image analysis, and painting recipes of 17th century painted grapes

To understand the key image features that we use to infer the glossiness of materials, we analyzed the pictorial shortcuts used by 17th century painters to imitate the optical phenomenon of specular reflections when depicting grapes. Gloss perception of painted grapes was determined via a rating experiment. We computed the contrast, blurriness,...

Soft like velvet and shiny like satin: Perceptual material signatures of fabrics depicted in 17th century paintings

Dutch 17th century painters were masters in depicting materials and their properties in a convincing way. Here, we studied the perception of the material signatures and key image features of different depicted fabrics, like satin and velvet. We also tested whether the perception of fabrics depicted in paintings related to local or global cues,...