Color appearance phenomena

Abney effect

(Purity on hue effect)

Colors appear to change in hue as white light is added to the color.

alt text Top row illustrates as white is added to blue, the new color appears to shift its hue toward purple. Bottom row of blues for comparison.

How it affects UI design

When creating color scales, or tints of a color, artificially shifting the hue will help combat the Abney effect.

The Abney effect is created from additive color mixing. A related phenomenon is the Bezold–Brücke shift, which can help to inform the creation of tints with natural hue appearance.

Sources:

  1. Thomas Norton, David Corliss, James Bailey (2020). The Psychophysical Measurement of Visual Function. 1st edition. Butterworth-Heinemann. Pages 261
  2. Mark D. Fairchild (2013). Color Appearance Models. 3rd edition. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Pages 241, 263
  3. Abney effect. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abney_effect
  4. Abney effect: what it is and how it influences our perception of color. PsychologySays.net. https://psychologysays.net/neurosciences/abney-effect-what-it-is-and-how-it-influences-our-perception-of-color/