The visual effects of lighting could be determined by how objects in the lighting environment appear.As appearance of objects in a lighting scene is apparently determined by luminance distribution or distribution of tri-stimulus values in the scene,the requirements for good quality lighting could be extracted directly from a luminance image or a tri-stimulus value image of the scene.An idea that those images should be analyzed in accordance with the model of our visual system or the multi-frequency channel model is first introduced.Algorism of an image conversion system based on the idea is then explained.Two image conversion systems,a conversion system between a luminance image and a brightness image and a system converting a luminance image into a glare image are introduced.Finally the possibility of appearance-based lighting design is illustrated.