‘rules’ that we apply to visual information  to assist our organization and interpretation of the information in consistent meaningful ways.

 When we need to organize or make sense of something in our visual field  When something is inconsistent or incomplete  Is it a conscious effort to do this? Not usually.

 Advertising to distract you  Painting for depth and texture cues  Different colour road work signs to make sure they stand out.

 Gestult Principles  Depth Principles  Perceptual Consistancies

 A German word meaning form or shape  Gestalt principles of visual perception refer to the ways in which we organise the features of a visual scene by grouping them to perceive a whole, complete form.  Gestalt principles help us construct a meaningful whole object from an assortment of parts that, when considered as individual bits, lack any real meaning.

 Figure Ground Organisation  Closure  Similarity  Proximity

The viewer classifies the information in the visual field so that prominent and relevant stimulus is identified against plainer surroundings  Figure – the prominent in the centre of our focus  Ground – the back ground or plainer stimulus.  Separated by a line called a contour Face or vase?

 Separated by a line called a contour  A type of perceptual organization that involves distinguishing edges of regions for the purpose of shape determination and determination of shape across an edge.

 Traffic signs  Reading  Looking at photographs  M.C. Escher’s paintings  When the figure could be the ground and the ground could be the figure it is said to be REVERSIBLE (M. C. Escher)  CAMOFLAGE occurs when figure and ground are not easily separated (Emma Hack)

 the perceptual tendency to mentally ‘close up’, fill in or ignore gaps in a visual image and to perceive objects as complete (‘whole’)

 the tendency to perceive parts of a visual image that have similar features such as  size,  shape,  Texture  Colour as belonging together in a unit, group or ‘whole’. (are the vertical or horizontal lines more prominent?)

Any type of uniform

 The tendency to perceive parts of a visual image which are positioned close together as belonging together in a group.  When stimuli are located near one another they are perceived as belonging together.

 In proximity the bigger picture or group is made up of smaller individual pieces.  The larger group is called the global level  The individual pieces is the local level.  On the left the global and Local letters are the same. On the right the global and Local letters are different.