Transparent layer constancy

In transparency perception the visual system assigns transmission-related attributes to transparent layers. Based on a filter model of perceptual transparency we investigate to what extent these attributes remain constant across changes of background and illumination. On a computational level, we used computer simulations to test how constant the parameters of the filter model remain under realistic changes in background reflectances and illumination and found almost complete constancy. This contrasts with systematic deviations from constancy found in cross-context matches of transparent filters. We show that these deviations are of a very regular nature and can be understood as a compromise between a proximal match of the mean stimulus color and complete constancy as predicted by the filter model.