What is the word for when colors look different under different lighting.?

Question

I thought it was called meticulation. There is a box that embroidery companies use to check if the colors of the fibers look different under different light, ie sunlight, florescent, and home lights. It may be a scientific term. However, the word I remember is not in the dictionary.

Answer 1

You may be thinking of 'metamerism' ... but that's not exactly correct. (I.e. many people use the word 'metamerism' to mean a color that shifts under different lighting, but that is not quite an accurate use of the word.) Metamerism is when TWO color samples match under one lighting condition, but do not under another. The two samples are said to be 'metamers' under one condition, and not under the other.

A better word is 'flare'. A page full of color samples ALL change spectrally when in different conditions (i.e. the eye recieves a different spectral light), but the eye adapts to the new conditions so that they all look the same *relative to each other*. However, a color sample that exhibits "flare" shifts more than its neighbors, and is therefore noticeably different. We say the color "flares yellow" or "flares blue".