A Method for Developing Images of Clothes Based on Visual and Tactile Evaluations of “Thickness” and “Thinness”☆

Abstract The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between the visual and tactile evaluations of the “thickness” and “thinness” of a piece of fabric, and to develop photographs of pieces of fabric adapted to the described degree of “thickness” and “thinness” using the evaluation results. We carried out two fabric texture evaluation experiments, one using only visual perception (VE) and the other using both visual and tactile perceptions (VTE), for thinness and thickness using eleven types of actual fabric. Ten observers evaluated the thickness and thinness of the fabric samples using a 5-point scale. The results indicated that there were no significant differences between the VE and VTE evaluations. This result implies that visual recognition is predominant in fabric texture assessment. We then focused on the results of the VTE-based evaluations, which presented an overall judgment of fabric textures. Next, to expound on the method for developing photographs of fabric samples using these thickness and thinness evaluations, we focused on two physical properties: a light transmittance of the fabric as a visual factor, and a thickness parameter “T0” in the Kawabata evaluation system as a tactile factor. The relationships between the evaluation results and the physical properties of the former and the latter were clarified by correlation analysis. The former exhibited a higher correlation than the latter in terms of a psychophysical relationship. We therefore focused on the light transmittance of the fabric samples, and developed and evaluated photographs that changed illumination levels to indicate the thickness and thinness levels. The results revealed that altering the photographs based on the aforementioned evaluations improved the accuracy of fabric texture recognition.