Legally Colorblind

[Zintendo]

Is there anybody else that sees only 3 colors in the rainbow?  I have gotten my sprites drawn out and shaded in black and white, but I have trouble differentiating colors on the green/red spectrum of wavelengths.  No, staring at the sun isn't the cause of this (although I did do that as a young kid for some reason).  It turns out, I had my dad check it out and he has the same ordeal.  I believe it is genetic.


http://colorvisiontesting.com/ishihara.htm

I'm coping fine as long as I stay technical and learn the appropriate hex values.  Adobe Flash lets me mouse over colors and pick out hex fluctuations that my eyes simply can't. (I use graphicsgale btw, not flash)



Anyways... Just thought I'd point this out.  You may not even know you are deficient in seeing colors, I didn't until I was much older.  The ratio of you forumgoers having some sort of color deficiency is probably one in 30, considering there are varying spectrum deficiencies.  There is a whole article on wikipedia, if you trust their malleable information, lol.



  I CANT SEE THE GRASS HUES 

[Mathias]

Tough break, man.

Thanks for the link. I believe my color perception is normal; passed 'em.



NO GRASS HUES!?!? GAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHh

[Ryumaru]

Color blindness is weird. I've known I'm partially red/ green colorblind but I can remember seeing those tests a year or two back and I could see more of the numbers. For the record I know I have a pretty clear concept of red and green that is the same as other people. I only find it problematic to identify in very small/ low saturation areas.

[ptoing]

Tomic is colourblind, and Archmage (C64 demoscene guy), and they are both great pixelartists. Don't let it stop you. Oh, Albert Uderzo (of Asterix fame) was colourblind too.

[Dusty]

I was surprised when I went to the eye doctor a few years ago for new glasses and they ran the test(I had no idea what it was) and then told me I'm colorblind. In retrospect it made sense, as people teased me about what I clearly though were the right colors(I remember an incident in school using green sharpie and thinking it was black). I'm red/green colorblind, but I mostly have problems with telling subtle differences, rather than outright not seeing green or red. I can see red, my cup is red. But if I were to put two colors that aren't too far apart in hue(a close shade of yellow and green) I'd start having a problem.

For example, when I first submitted this piece: http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/68501.htm

I just straight ramped the shades rather than adjusting the hue:



I got a lot of complaints that it looked green, it completely caught me off guard. I often have friends double check my colors now to make sure my yellows aren't green, and my orange picks are actually orange.

[Kcilc]

I failed that test haha. I consider myself in the same boat and Ryumaru and Dusty; I only really have trouble picking out shades that are close together.

However, I remember going on a walk with my girlfriend when she pointed out a red bird in the woods, and I couldn't find it no matter how hard I tried. I couldn't even see it when it was flying around apparently.

[Facet]

Another one here, more fine differentiation, good for checking your monitor. Poor calibration could make any of this stuff more difficult though. 

[Crow]

Another one here, more fine differentiation, good for checking your monitor. Poor calibration could make any of this stuff more difficult though.

11! Wohoo~

[Charlieton]

Another one here, more fine differentiation, good for checking your monitor. Poor calibration could make any of this stuff more difficult though.

11! Wohoo~

I got 0 when I did that test a few years back. I'm afraid to try it again, as I'd like to continue living with the happy delusion that I have perfect colour vision still and always

[ptoing]

I got 0 as well when I first did it. Not gonna try on my current monitor which is 7 years old and showing signs of discoloration, which is not gonna help. I think to score very well in this test you really need a decent monitor.

[Dusty]

Another one here, more fine differentiation, good for checking your monitor. Poor calibration could make any of this stuff more difficult though.

That is insanely hard... the third one(teal and blue) is practically impossible for me. It's not helping that I'm getting cross-eyed trying to look at it... it feels like I'm looking at one of those optical illusions.

[Conzeit]

I learnt today that Snake/Imson of Owlboy and Collossal katamari fame is colorblind, also R/G colorblind although I dont know to what degree....and he's doing pretty damn well, could never tell from his work. So yeah, like ptoing said no worries whatsoever, it wont limit what you can do if you work on it =)

[Ryumaru]

Colorblind artists prevail! It's comforting to know there are a lot of great artists who are colorblind.

[Carnivac]

Cheers for the links.  Had wondered if I had any colorblindness but it would seem not despite what some people say about my color usage.   

[Seiseki]

Colorblind artists prevail! It's comforting to know there are a lot of great artists who are colorblind.

I was really depressed a few years back when I feared I was color blind and when I finally got it confirmed at a doctor I felt really miserable, luckily I didn't let it stop me because I love design and art..

And it's only color deficiency, I can see  red/green fine unless it's low saturation or very dark.
Also having digital tools that can tell the exact RGB values help. I sometimes mix up dark brown and dark green, so I'm extra careful with those colors.

Something that is quite annoying though is that certain colors like neon orange next to dark blue is hard for me to focus on, especially light ( like from a monitor) also some colors on alarm clocks. which look fuzzy.

edit [Something I've noticed when playing LoL, the purple text is hard to focus on for me, it doesn't look as sharp as other colors, not sure if it's color deficiency or the fact that I have glasses, because I doubt the designers who chose purple have the same issue. (also why did they choose blue/purple and not red/blue? Purple still contains blue so it's not the best opposite match) http://i.snag.gy/EoCEu.jpg]

It does lower your confidence somewhat as an artist, knowing you can never have perfect color vision, but for me this is all I have so it's good enough.
I just have to read up more on colors and color theory to know what to avoid and be careful with.

@Dusty
I find that dark yellow looks very green..
I thought it was due to my color deficiency, but maybe it's like that for everyone? I just tend to make the shadows more red.

[Dusty]

edit [Something I've noticed when playing LoL, the purple text is hard to focus on for me, it doesn't look as sharp as other colors, not sure if it's color deficiency or the fact that I have glasses, because I doubt the designers who chose purple have the same issue. (also why did they choose blue/purple and not red/blue? Purple still contains blue so it's not the best opposite match) http://i.snag.gy/EoCEu.jpg]

Games that include Color Blindness options are amazing. I wish more games did it. I know puzzle games that use colors(like colored gems) get very hard as you get into later levels with more colors. I can differ green and yellow, but I can't do so at the blazingly fast speeds the games tend to expect. However, even games outside of puzzle games should start considering this. I know Call of Duty has a colorblind mode that changes red names to a bright orange/yellowish color, and team mate colors change from green to light blue. It makes it MUCH easier to quickly evaluate icons/names, especially against a mostly brown/dull background. However, that's still a big issue with modern games these days. Where most of the game is a dull brown shade, enemies/characters easily blend in with their backgrounds.

[Seiseki]

Yeah, it would actually be good to have a color blind gui designer, since so many males have some form of colorblindness..
Just having game designers that know basic color theory would be a good start.

[Facet]

I got 0 as well when I first did it. Not gonna try on my current monitor which is 7 years old and showing signs of discoloration, which is not gonna help. I think to score very well in this test you really need a decent monitor.

Yeah, I managed the 0 on my newer monitor, not on my older laptop; found the blue most difficult on either though.

Interesting thinking about work-arounds, @Seisenki: Photoshop has a couple of built-in global filters simulating complete red or green blindness (view>proof setup) Might be worth experimenting with personalised filters too?

[Ai]

^ GIMP and GPick both have colorblindness filters as well (GPick is a color picker and palette creator, FYI. It includes a lot of  tools for analyzing and comparing colors too.)

[Seiseki]

But those filters are just for regular people, to show how the image looks for people with color blindness.

[ptoing]

They are for people making graphic design and other things, to make sure what they are doing looks decent and readable for colourblind folks as well.

[Ai]

^^

All of the above mentioned programs have other filters as well. Since the additional information is there and it's just that you don't fully perceive it, you can partially detect it via transforms. Facet's original reply probably wasn't particularly well thought out qua what is immediately useful for those who -are- colorblind, but you may be able to recover some information via gamma or contrast filters.
Maybe a filter that transposes RGB channels would be useful to you (I'm not sure, as I personally don't have any known degree of colorblindness) -- I don't know about Photoshop, but both GIMP and GPick implement display filters via simple plugins, so such a filter would be a fairly straightforward thing to write.

I wrote the Quantization filter for GPick myself, and of the 100-odd lines of that, the core filter is implemented in only 6 lines -- much of the rest is just boilerplate.

GIMP's Gamma filter is a good example of a simple GIMP display filter, and it's similar in complexity -- more boilerplate, but the core behaviour is implemented in ~12 lines.

It's unclear whether Photoshop supports proper display filter plugins, or if it's limited to the hardcoded behaviour of the color-proofing options.
Fortunately, given color proofing functionality and an appropriate target ICC profile, it is possible to perform arbitrary transforms of the image colorspace (as in the above example of transposing the RGB channels), but I don't personally understand how one constructs an appropriate ICC profile. Probably investigating littlecms2 would be enlightening in that regard.

[ErekT]

I find that dark yellow looks very green..
I thought it was due to my color deficiency, but maybe it's like that for everyone? I just tend to make the shadows more red.

If I take a pure yellow and make it dark, HSL < 50, it does look kinda green. Cammo-green. I have no color deficiency that I know of.

[Ai]

That's perfectly normal, and AFAICS it just reflects that additive mixing (eg. LCD screens) works differently from subtractive mixing (eg. paint).
It's only slightly about how HSL is a bad colorspace and it should feel bad.

[Facet]

Yeah, it would actually be good to have a color blind gui designer

But those filters are just for regular people, to show how the image looks for people with color blindness.

?

For those personally affected: as Ai, I'm really not sure what kind of cues would be helpful to signpost invisible colours (there's almost certainly stuff out there already though), but we visualise other parts of the spectrum currently via compression into our own range with groovy rainbow things and such.

*'infrared' thermal vision


*'ultraviolet' insect vision


Even a straight warmer/cooler (colour) indication could be pretty useful for those with major discrepancies.

[Ai]

^ HSL or LCH decomposition (specifically, taking the 'hue' channel from an image) seems like it might help. In GIMP this is available by default, in Colors->Components->Decompose (then you need to select the colorspace to decompose in). The output is a set of three grayscale layers in a new image, with the topmost conveniently being H.

[Argyle]

Ought to look at that test on my 2 other PCs / 3 other monitors as a catalyst for comparing how differently my monitors are calibrated and effecting my perception of color.

[Seiseki]

Yeah, it would actually be good to have a color blind gui designer

But those filters are just for regular people, to show how the image looks for people with color blindness.

?

For those personally affected: as Ai, I'm really not sure what kind of cues would be helpful to signpost invisible colours (there's almost certainly stuff out there already though), but we visualise other parts of the spectrum currently with groovy rainbow things and such.

Even a straight warmer/cooler (colour) indication could be pretty useful for those with major discrepancies.

I really hope that flower is completely yellow, or my color deficiency is worse than I though..
And those cups look the same to me

(you scared the crap out of me, had to check the rgb values in photoshop...)

[ptoing]

Uh wait, that version of the flower on the right is a simulation of how bees might see them, right?

[Facet]

Ah yeah, sorry; just random visualisations of stuff outside the visible EM spectrum as analogy to how a filter could transpose colours into a more limited range for the colourblind. Top: 'infrared' thermal vision (hot and cold drinks), bottom: 'ultraviolet' bee vision (targets/landing strips). Ai's method sounds good, I might mess about with a working example.

Ptoing, you know your bees .

[Seiseki]

haha, imagine someone with a shirt like that... "aaah, where did all those bees come from!?" 

I wonder if you could make target advertising towards colorblind and non-colorblind by using some tricks with letters in certain colors

[Facet]

[Ryumaru]

Would that message actually not show up for completely color blind people?

[ptoing]

Completely colourblind would mean no colour vision at all, which is super rare. But yeah, red/green deficient people would not see the SECRETLY LOATHE.

[Seiseki]

Completely colourblind would mean no colour vision at all, which is super rare. But yeah, red/green deficient people would not see the SECRETLY LOATHE.

I can see it.. xD

[Dusty]

Ya, I can see it fine too. It may effect someone with more severe cases of red/green colorblindness, but it isn't designed in a way that will effect the most common form of colorblindness(which most of us seem to have):

Deuteranomaly (most common—6% of males, 0.4% of females):[24] These individuals have a mutated form of the medium-wavelength (green) pigment. The medium-wavelength pigment is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum resulting in a reduction in sensitivity to the green area of the spectrum. Unlike protanomaly the intensity of colors is unchanged. This is the most common form of color blindness, making up about 6% of the male population. The deuteranomalous person is considered "green weak". For example, in the evening, dark green cars appear to be black to Deuteranomalous people. Similar to the protanomates, deuteranomates are poor at discriminating small differences in hues in the red, orange, yellow, green region of the spectrum. They make errors in the naming of hues in this region because the hues appear somewhat shifted towards red. One very important difference between deuteranomalous individuals and protanomalous individuals is deuteranomalous individuals do not have the loss of "brightness" problem.

[ptoing]

Interesting. Did not know about the brightness thing.

[Ryumaru]

Ya, I can see it fine too. It may effect someone with more severe cases of red/green colorblindness, but it isn't designed in a way that will effect the most common form of colorblindness(which most of us seem to have):

Deuteranomaly (most common—6% of males, 0.4% of females):[24] These individuals have a mutated form of the medium-wavelength (green) pigment. The medium-wavelength pigment is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum resulting in a reduction in sensitivity to the green area of the spectrum. Unlike protanomaly the intensity of colors is unchanged. This is the most common form of color blindness, making up about 6% of the male population. The deuteranomalous person is considered "green weak". For example, in the evening, dark green cars appear to be black to Deuteranomalous people. Similar to the protanomates, deuteranomates are poor at discriminating small differences in hues in the red, orange, yellow, green region of the spectrum. They make errors in the naming of hues in this region because the hues appear somewhat shifted towards red. One very important difference between deuteranomalous individuals and protanomalous individuals is deuteranomalous individuals do not have the loss of "brightness" problem.

Yeah that explains it perfectly. If a patch of color is small and low in saturation, sometimes I can't distinguish well between something being green or orange as they can have similar local values.