Purpose. To determine the role of chromatic content for the recognition of briefly presented images of natural scenes. Methods. Stimuli were digitized photographs of natural scenes. On each trial, an image (target) was briefly presented for 8-120 ms in color or black & white, immediately followed by a noise mask. In the following test phase, the target image and a distractor were shown, both in color or in black & white. The subject's task was to identify the target image. Results. The proportion of correctly recognized images increased as a function of presentation duration. At 30 ms subjects were able to recognize ca. 75% of the images. Subjects were better in recognizing the colored images. The difference in performance between images presented in color and black & white gradually emerged within the first 50 ms. For very briefly presented images (< 30 ms) subjects identified the colored images better than black & white images, irrespective of whether the testing was done with colored or black & white images. At longer presentation durations, the advantage for color occurs only when the images were presented and tested in color. Conclusions. For object recognition in natural scenes, color information contributes at both sensory (coding) and cognitive (representation) levels of information processing. Furthermore, the traditional view of color information being processed slowly and independently of luminance information is not tenable in the context of viewing natural scenes. Color and luminance are intermingled and used in combination with information about visual form to achieve a fast and unitary representation of the visual world in the brain.