Cross-Media Color Appearance Reproduction in Optical See-Through Augmented Reality

In optical see-through (OST) augmented reality (AR), displayed colors blend with the real-world scene, affecting perceived color. Studies showed that AR's color appearance depends not only on the additive chromaticity of the display and the real scene but also on ambient illumination. However, these studies often overlook changes in observer's adaptation state under varying illumination. To address this, a series of color-matching experiments between AR and display devices was conducted in an immersive lighting environment. The first experiment under a D65 illuminant found a slightly higher correlated color temperature (CCT) level of the internal white point in OST AR than in the display. Considering media's white point differences, this study proposes a three-step chromatic adaptation transform (CAT) framework to improve color appearance reproduction accuracy in AR. The second experiment used three Planckian radiators varying in CCT and two offPlanckian colorful ones to validate the proposed CAT under varying illumination, indicating that AR reached a more complete adaptation state than the display, especially under high luminance. A third validation experiment had observers rate color differences between reference and reproduced stimuli in AR. Results showed the effectiveness of our three-step CAT for cross-media color reproduction of OST AR under diverse illumination conditions.