Abstract: A high dynamic range (HDR) image rendition method based on color vision pathway is proposed in order to display HDR images on ordinary display devices with low dynamic range. This method mimics the way of color vision pathway to compress dynamic range of HDR images, which can reconstruct the lost visible details during displaying HDR images. On the first stage of this method, chromaticity of the HDR image is adapted and then the relative photoreceptor response of each pixel is computed based on each adapted luminance level. On the second stage, the results from the first stage are transformed to orthogonal opponent color space by PCA, and then process them to meet the request of display devices with low dynamic range according to lateral inhibition mechanism of color vision. Finally, the obtained images can fit to typical display devices. The experimental results, by subjective evaluation, objective evaluation and comparison with some excellent rendition methods, demonstrate that the proposed method has good performance on rendition of visible fine details of original HDR images with various high dynamic range.