In modern society, elderly people tend to become enthusiastic users of displays. These displays are optimized for the visual properties of young adults ignoring the specific attributes of the vision of the elderly though the existence of differences is evident. It is true, however, that most of the investigations follow a bottom-up paradigm (changes of optical density, neural changes, etc.), and their results are too ambiguous to be taken into account directly in display optimization for the elderly, partly because there is a long-term adaptation, which apparently recompensates for some of the changes in the human visual system. Preference is a high-level psychological factor having a very important impact on the acceptability, of color displays. The present article follows a top-down methodology to investigate these age-related differences directly. The first part concentrates on functionalities of the human visual system: while point preference, chroma perception, unique, and preferred hues. Results confirm the long-term compensation theory for the elderly observers along with the chromatic content decrease of perceived colors. The second part investigates preference differences in case of photorealistic images in terms of global and local contrast, white point, average chroma, and the effect of several image color manipulation techniques. Results indicate significant differences between young and aged observers color image preference, some of which can be explained with neuro-physiological changes, others may be attributed to cultural implications. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.