Neon Colour Spreading

From Michael’s “Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena”

What to observe – On the right, black lines flank a red star. This red star sports a “neon glow” around it, so it actually looks like a red disk.

What to do – By operating the buttons, you can see the neon glow vanish when the black inducers disappear. Any gap (due to shrinkage or rotation) destroys the illusion as well. The colourpicker helps you to assess the effect of colour. Any saturated colour works.

Comment – While I sorted this phenomenon into the colour section, it works also with gray levels. The gap and rotation effects were described by Redies & Spillmann 1981.

Sources

Varin D (1971) Fenomeni di contrasto e diffusione cromatica nell organizzazione spaziale del campo percettivo. Rivista di Psicologia 65:101–128

Tuijl HFJM van (1975) A new visual illusion: Neonlike color spreading and complementary color induction between subjective contours. Acta Psychologica 39:441–445

Redies C & Spillmann L (1981) The neon color effect in the Ehrenstein illusion. Perception 10:667–681

Redies C, Spillmann L & Kunz K (1984) Colored neon flanks and line gap  enhancement. Vision Res 24:1301–1309

Bressan P, Mingolla E, Spillmann L & Watanabe T (1997) Neon color spreading: A review. Perception 26:1353–1366

Kitaoka A, Gyoba J, Kawabata H & Sakurai K (2001) Two competing mechanisms underlying neon color spreading, visual phantoms and grating induction. Vision Res 41:2347–2354