Luminance Distribution Effects on the Visual Quality of Human Skin

To investigate how humans visually perceive the quality of their skin, we took photographs of the faces of 117 Japanese women. Subsequently, we cropped a square patch around the right cheek of every woman and presented to subjects that had to rate their perceived visual quality. In Experiment 1, we found that the perceived age was highly correlated with the number of wrinkles, the glossiness perception and the quantity of colored spots, whereas the visibility of pores and the color of the skin had low correlation. Moreover, the age perception also was significantly high correlated with image and sub-band statistics of the luminance channel. In Experiment 2, we built artificial images by using a histogram matching technique that modifies the luminance distribution but keeps the color and pattern information intact, and found that the modification of the luminance statistics on the skin texture resulted in a correlated modification in the perceived age and skin quality assessments.

Arce-Lopera, C. A., Okajima, K., Igarashi, T., Nakao, K. (2012). Luminance Distribution Effects on the Visual Quality of Human Skin. Edinburgh: Lulu press.

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