There is a large literature characterizing human perception of the lightness and color of matte surfaces arranged in coplanar arrays. In the past ten years researchers have begun to examine perception of lightness and color using wider ranges of stimuli intended to better approximate the conditions of everyday viewing. One emerging line of research concerns perception of lightness and color in scenes that approximate the three-dimensional environment we live in, with objects that need not be matte or coplanar and with geometrically complex illumination. A second concerns the perception of material surface properties other than color and lightness, such as gloss or roughness. This special issue features papers that address the rich set of questions and approaches that have emerged from these new research directions. Here, we briefly describe the articles in the issue and their relation to previous work.