Analysis of color-matching ellipses in a cone-excitation space.

Color-discrimination ellipses derived from the variability of color-matching data of six observers are analyzed in a normalized constant-luminance cone-excitation space. The analysis shows that the ellipses do not vary significantly in shape with chromaticity, observer, or experimental conditions. The discrimination contours are predictable from the thresholds on the two cardinal axes of this space; these are used to normalize the data at each chromaticity for each observer. Thresholds on these two axes vary with chromaticities, individuals, and experimental conditions in accordance with simple and familiar laws.