Color and visual complexity in abstract images: Part II

Abstract

There are a limited number of studies examining color, visual complexity, and visual interest together, and one of the recent studies that tried to bring a new understanding to the association between color, visual complexity, and visual interest was the first part of the current study. Most of the well‐known color studies researching the effects of color on psychology, physiology, emotion, mood, attention, well‐being, visual complexity, and visual interest used isolated color patches that might be lacking in reflecting the dominating factors. Thus, the aim of this study was to find the relationship between visual complexity, visual interest, and color difference (ΔE) values of colors in abstract images, and it was hypothesized that, as the average ΔE value of colors in an abstract image increases, visual interest and visual complexity will increase until reaching a threshold where visual interest and visual complexity start to decrease. In order to test the hypothesis, a new abstract image was generated and colored. The generated abstract image was rated by 120 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. As the results of the study indicated, there was an inverted U‐curve relationship between average ΔE values and both visual interest and visual complexity in abstract images.