Scattering and absorption in the atmosphere influence the colors of objects and can dramatically affect the way a landscape is perceived. We estimated, computationally, the chromatic losses in natural scenes as a function of the viewing distance for several atmospheric conditions. The study was based on models of real atmospheric scattering and absorption applied to hyperspectral data from natural images. It was found that exponential models could describe well the reduction in the number of perceived colors as a function of the viewing distance and the relationship between the coefficient reflecting the sum of the scattering and absorption effects and the viewing distance for a 50% reduction in colors. These results provide simple models to estimate the chromatic losses with viewing distance and can be used in applications of atmospheric optics concerned with visual simulations. (C) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.