Visual Perception

of Pictures
 Picture Perception

 How do we perceive 3D spatial structure from

cues in a photograph or painting?

 The eye is NOT a camera

 There is NO homunculus
 Vision is NOT veridical
 What we see is NOT really there; the HVS transforms
the raw data
 Pictorial Space Structure Cues
 Size, texture, shading, occlusion, etc.
 But NOT stereo, motion parallax,
accommodation, etc.
 Layout of objects in scene is specified by their relative
locations on ground surface
 Ground texture provides intrinsic scale of relative distance
and size
 Horizon ratios specify relative depth and size
 Information is preserved in image from any viewpoint
Depicting Our World: The Beginning

Prehistoric Painting, Lascaux Cave, France, ~ 13,000 -- 15,000 B.C.

 Origins of Picture Making:
Shadows
 Corinthian Maid
 Traced an outline
of her lover’s
shadow to create a
permanent
reminder of him
before he left the
country
 Favored explanation
for the origin of
painting and drawing
in 18th and early 19th Joseph Wright, The Corinthian Maid,
centuries 1783-84
Depicting Our World: Middle
Ages

Cimabue, Madonna
in majesty (c. 1280)
Depicting Our World: Middle Ages

The Empress Theodora with her court.

Ravenna, St. Vitale (6th c.)
 painting
Filippo Brunelleschi’s
mirror
Discovery of Linear
Perspective, c. 1413

baptistry
 Why Did It Work?
Burnished silver
reflects sky Unified perspective & cues
moving clouds
virtual image at Reduction screen:
infinite distance monocular view
 no stereopsis
 no convergence

 no motion parallax

 increases depth of field,

Mirror
reduces accommodation
blurs painting  occludes frame/edges
surface texture
 eye at station point
little mirror
surface texture
virtual image
behind mirror
 Alberti’s Window
 Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura, 1435
 Look through a stretched gauze sheet
(“window”) held at a fixed distance to see
the distant scene. Note the location on the
cloth corresponding to key points in the
scene. Transfer to grid on painting canvas.
 Can be done with a frosted glass window
 Same basis as in Dürer’s perspective
methods
 Alberti’s Reticolato (“grid”) (c. 1450)

 On table for stability

 Post to ensure stable viewing
(eye position)
 Wires on wooden frame form
grid
 Place frame perpendicular to
line of sight, at a distance to
frame scene
 Draw on separate page
 Proper viewing position:
where the top of the post was
Dürer, “Draughtsman Drawing a Recumbent
Woman” (1527)
 Same basic principle as Alberti’s veil
 Leonardo used a related technique in 1510
 Geometrical (rather than orthoscopic) perspective
 Proper viewing position: tip of rod
Depicting Our World: Renaissance

Masaccio, Trinity, c.
1427, Santa Maria
Novella, Florence
Carlo Crivelli (1486) The Annunciation, with St. Emidius
Perspective analysis of Crivelli’s Annunciation
 Illusionism
“The light ought to come from the Picture to the spectator’s Eye in the
very same manner as it would from the objects themselves.” --
Brook Taylor, 1715

Painting as a
cross-section of
Euclid’s and
Alberti’s visual
cone
 Trompe L’Oeil
 “Deceiving the Eye”
 A depiction of an object, person, or scene, which is
so lifelike that it appears to be real
 A style of painting which gives the appearance of
three-dimensional, or photographic realism. It
flourished from the Renaissance onward. The
discovery of linear perspective in 15th-century Italy
and advancements in the science of optics in the
17th-century Netherlands enabled artists to render
object and spaces with eye-fooling exactitude.
Trompe
L’oeil
Painting “A completed
painting is as a mirror
“Deceive the eye” of nature, where
things that do not
appear seem to
appear, and which
deceives in an
allowably entertaining
and praiseworthy
manner.”

Samual van
Hoogstraten (1662)
Perspective illusion
Andrea Mantegna (1461-74) Ceiling fresco,
Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua
Richard Haas Mural, 1987, Madison, Wisconsin
Fra Andrea Pozzo (1691-4) The glorification of St. Ignatius. Church of St. Ignazio, Rome.
Viewed from marble disk at CP
Pozzo’s Drawing Technique
1. Made a detailed drawing of
the false architecture, and
transferred it onto a square
grid.
2. Suspended a matching
network of strings from the
top of the nave, just below
the curved vault.
3. Strings attached at chosen
viewpoint on the floor.
4. Visually project string onto
cylindrical ceiling.
Wrong viewpoint
Linear Perspective is only Correct when
Viewed from the Center of Projection

3D scene

PP
VP
central
ray

CP
other
viewpoints

Samual van Hoogstraten (1662) Perspective

illusion
Perspective Distortion Shear & Shear
• Back-project from incorrect viewpoint Expansion
(assuming parallel edges)
• Shear: line to VP = center of corridor
• Expansion: smaller angle = farther distance

3rd
VP VP

VP
Left Correct
CP
DP 3rd VP

Left +
Far

La Gournerie (1859) Treatice on Linear Perspective

 The Robustness of our
Perception of Perspective
 Yet it’s been observed that we don’t often notice
perspective distortions caused by the observer not
being at CP!

 Station Point Paradox:

 Perspective is geometrically correct only when viewed from
the center of projection (CP), yet pictures don’t look
distorted from many other viewpoints. How?
Pierre-Etienne-Théodore Rousseau (1857) The village of Becquigny. Frick Collection
Rousseau’s Village of Becquigny, viewed from about 45˚ to the left.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1495-8) The last supper. Refectory of the Church of
Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan (restored 1999)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1495-8) The last supper. Refectory of the Church of
Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan.
 The Compensation Theory
(Pirenne)
 We perceive the surface of the picture and use it to
compensate for an incorrect viewing position, and thus
for the geometric distortion.
“When the shape and position of the picture surface can be seen, an
unconscious psychological process of compensation takes place,
which restores the correct view when the picture is viewed from
the wrong position.” -- Pirenne (1970)
 We see an ellipse as a tilted circle
 Must see the surface to see through the surface
 The Geometer Theory
(Kubovy)

 But how do you know where the correct viewpoint is?

 The visual system acts like a geometer to reconstruct CP
 Inverse perspective analysis
 Recover position and distance of CP

 Then compensate for current viewing position and

correct distortions
 Warren’s Non-Euclidean Theory
 Distortions are present, but we usually don’t notice
them
 Don’t attend to Euclidean shape and distance, but to
relative (local) layout of scene
 See distortions because projected shapes are wrong.
Larger distortions are more noticeable.
 Same image specifies receding road from any viewpoint.
Rotation is more noticeable with deep perspective.
 M. C. Escher

Ascending and Descending, 1960 Waterfall, 1961

Retinal Sampling

Density of receptors
decreases
exponentially from the
center to the periphery
of the retina
Visual Acuity

With one eye shut,

at the right
distance, all of
these letters should
appear equally
legible
 What Makes the Mona Lisa Smile?
The smile only becomes apparent if a viewer
looks at her eyes or elsewhere on her face; the
smile disappears when looking directly at her
mouth

Peripheral vision is low resolution and blurs,

picking up shadows from the Mona Lisa's
cheekbones, which suggests the curvature of
a smile
"The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa's
smile can be explained by the fact that her
smile is almost entirely in low spatial
frequencies, and so is seen best by your
peripheral vision“
-- Margaret Livingstone

The actress Geena Davis also shows the Mona Lisa effect, always seeming to be
smiling, even when she isn't, because her cheek bones are so prominent
 Field of View
 Human vision system uses narrow-field-of-view and
wide-field-of-view naturally and intelligently
 2 , high-acuity fovea window of the world
o

 3 saccades per second and gaze moves

 Human vision can integrate information seamlessly
 Saccadic Eye Movements

Work by Russian psychophysicist Yarbus who traced saccadic eye movements

When is Perspective NOT Robust?
 Trompe l’oeil
 only 1 correct viewpoint
 other viewpoints often yield visual distortions

 Pictures of pictures
 Anamorphic art
Fra Andrea Pozzo (1691-4) The glorification of St. Ignatius. Church of St. Ignazio, Rome.
View from end of nave.
A photograph We can’t “see” the
of orientation of the
a photograph photo relative to
the viewer, so no
automatic
correction occurs
and the photo
looks distorted

Time Magazine, 1968

 Anamorphosis
 ana-mor-pho-sis: 1. a drawing presenting a distorted
image which appears in natural form under certain
conditions, as when viewed at a raking angle or
reflected from a curved mirror. 2. the method of
producing such a drawing. 3. Zoology, Entomology.
the gradual change in form from one type to another
during the evolution of a group of plants or animals 4.
(in certain arthropods) metamorphosis in which body
parts or segments are added to those already present.
Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Atlanticus, c. 1486
Hans Holbein (1533) The ambassadors. National Gallery, London
Hans Holbein the Younger,
The Ambassadors, 1533
Anamorphic Projection
VP1
PP

skull
CP2

room

CP1

2 Centers of Projection:
• Orthogonal PP
• Slanted PP
William Scrots (1533)
Portrait of Prince Edward
VI of England
 Painters have used Heuristics to aid
in Robust Perception of Perspective

Example: Leonardo’s Moderate

Distance Rule
To minimize noticeable distortion, use shallow perspective:
“Make your view at least 20 times as far off as the
greatest width or height of the objects represented,
and this will satisfy any spectator placed anywhere
opposite to the picture.”

-- Leonardo
Example: Extreme Viewpoints Perspective

Mantegna, Lamentation over the dead Christ, 1480

Ogden’s photo recreation of The dead Christ.
Out of Bounds Photography
Out of Bounds Photography
OOB Predates
Digital
Photography!

Escaping Criticism,
1874, del Caso
Why’s the Person in that Painting
Staring at Me?