psychovisual

Psychovisual is the study of the relationship between visual stimuli and perceptual experience. It encompasses how the human visual system processes brightness, color, motion, and form, and how this processing influences what is perceived and remembered. In practical terms, psychovisual research informs technologies such as image and video encoding, display design, and virtual reality by modeling perceptual limits and biases.

Key concepts include perceptual thresholds, such as the just noticeable difference (JND), masking effects where a stimulus becomes less detectable in the presence of another, and contrast sensitivity across spatial frequencies. Researchers investigate how attenuation or enhancement of signals in different channels (luminance versus chrominance, eye-fixation) affects perception. The retina and brain are considered as parts of an integrated system that filters, enhances, or discards information.

Applications of psychovisual principles appear in multimedia, where perceptual modeling guides encoding and quality assessment, enabling more efficient compression by discarding information that is less perceptible. In display technology, psychovisual concepts inform calibration, color management, and brightness rendering. In research, they support studies of visual perception, attention, and visual cognition.

Methods commonly used include psychophysical experiments, threshold measurements, masking tasks, adaptation studies, and psychometric modeling. The resulting models describe how sensory signals are transformed into perceptual experiences and are used to predict human response to visual stimuli across devices and contexts.