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12-11-2021, 03:34 AM   #16
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QuoteOriginally posted by pentaxus Quote
In the 80's I worked at a camera store. After the lab had a color blind person knowingly apply for a job (she didn't think anyone would notice) I was tasked with administering color blindness tests to everyone. I found a color printer who was red-green deficient. He actually did a fair job of printing because he could see bright colors well enough but couldn't do quality control.
My ex's supervisor (he got her and another two of his PhD students into photography) also has some form of mild daltonism. In post, he always saturates and brightens his reds, otherwise they look super dull to him. It's not that they are *blobs* of red/orange, but they are certainly very punchy even for Canon standards. I guess it was a similar case here?

12-11-2021, 05:31 AM   #17
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This thread answers the question, I guess, as to why I print in 1200 dpi, and why 300 dpi (which is good enough for the average photographer) is so fuzzy as to be unusable. People get on my for optimizing sharpness that they can't see all the time, but here's why.

QuoteOriginally posted by RGlasel Quote
A cousin of mine is so strongly colour blind that red and green traffic lights look like different shades of grey. His trade is forensic accounting, not photography. There are a few blue-green colours that look grey to me, but I don't think that affects my photography as much as much as my aversion to oversaturated colours. I have noticed that most of the photographs posted here have the background diminished in various ways in order to emphasize a single central object or concept. I try to capture multiple objects and themes in a single image. I suspect that differences in subjective perspective outweigh differences in visual acuity.
I'm not that badly off, but the "yellow" or "amber" lenses produce the same light as the "red" ones do. So I either have to ask someone in the car with me whether I have to stop or not, and if there's no one to ask, I just stop anyway - which may drive the people behind me crazy, but what the heck? Patience is a virtue, right? What idiot came up with the scheme of using the primary colors of PIGMENT for street lights instead of those for LIGHT??? I could tell the difference if the lights were magenta, yellow-green, and cyan (blue-green).
And, while we're on the subject of road conditions, here's the thing that makes me crazy: people with "normal color vision" rely heavily on color to provide contrast data; I don't, I ignore color. As a result, things are totally washed out for them at dawn and dusk, while I am blinded by mid-day light. I can wear sunglasses, while the color-normals turn their brightest headlights on, clearly trying to cause a wreck by blinding oncoming drivers. Because of the increased sensitivity to luminosity that results from poorer color-vision (which I refer to as "wolf-vision"), I see best at dawn and dusk.
I'm with you on the oversaturated color bit - I often say that if you're wowed by the technique, then you're not looking at a "subject"; the result may be "art" but it's not "photography", by my lights. If you're thinking about the lighting during the play, then that's bad lighting, no matter how brilliantly designed. And too much make up makes a woman look "tarty" rather than pretty. If you notice it, it's too much.

---------- Post added 2021-12-11 at 05:33 AM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by biz-engineer Quote
They see all photos as vintage, even when freshly captured.
And those with normal color vision see them as post-impressionistic paintings. I'm thinking Seurat, only with larger blobs of color.

This trait is an important environmental adaptation, for those living in a state of nature armed with simple weapons (i.e. men, not women). That's because I can see Bambi tucked down among the tall grass from much farther off (i.e., arrow-shooting distance) than a similar man with normal color vision because I am not fooled by color cameoflage and the texture, or timbre of the light, if you will, reflected off the deer is so different from that from the weeds, that Bambi sticks out like a sore thumb. Hence, my ancestors lived to reproduce, and their children lived to reproduce, while other people's children starved. It's a "we're just coming out of the Ice Age kind of thing".

I characterize the difference between my way of seeing and that of people having good color vision is this, if you are of sufficient age to recognize the references: I see the world in 8k ultra high definition but with 8 bit color with the saturation turned down very low in the red and green spectrum, while my wife (who has not just good but way superior color vision) sees the world in VGA but with 32 bit colors turned up all the way. Of course these characteristics are most likely normally distributed on the Gaussian curve, so in a sense, we're all color blind, it's just a matter of degree (most of us, after all, do not perceive long-wave ultraviolet or infrared).

I've collected the various comments I've made previously on this subject below, in no particular order and without any indication as to the subject of the thread to which I was responding.

... Funny you should mention B&W photography. I used to do a lot of that back when film and developer were pretty inexpensive. But, being color blind also means being what I call, "resolution enhanced". I've got more luminosity "pixels" per square inch of retina than people with good color vision, because the receptors for color are relatively huge and take up a lot of real estate on the sensor. Since I don't have so many of those, I've got gazillions more of the relatively tiny luminosity receptors. It's like I'm seeing in QHD 4K in (almost) HDR B&W while other people are seeing in VGA in 32 bit full color with a limited dynamic range (wolf vision - that's my superpower). (I have to qualify that a little - I have red/green color blindness, normal in the blue/yellow range.) Anyway, I can't stand digital cameras' "black and white" because it's not truly black and white, it's grayscale, which looks entirely different to me, and I figure if you're going to do that kind of gradient-based picture, you may as well have color. ...

... I think it's a big problem that the data is presented (in the viewfinder) in red. The advantage of red text is that it is less likely to screw up your ability to see at night, but the disadvantage is that males of Northern European extraction (especially) are likely to have red-green color-blindness (such as myself). So all I see is dark lettering on a dark background, nearly impossible to make out. If they made it magenta instead of red, they'd preserve much of the value of red text, but the blue content would make it visible to folks like me. ...

... I'm color-blind, myself, so my approach, which I see as an alternative to your switch to simulated monochrome, is to ignore color. Set the camera to "natural" and set the white balance to "auto" (or better if you can, "multi-auto" a-la K-1) and don't touch the "hue slider" in post processing. If you're at all concerned about white balance being right, stick a light diffusing filter in front of the lens to create a custom setting on your first shot on location. And do your post-processing on a monitor that comes from the factory properly calibrated. If you're the sort who likes to yocky-fooch the white balance to make your image warmer or cooler, do it very sparingly. No one will notice you don't see color as they do. ...

... And, to continue the conversation, I find I've developed a new "pet peeve": over-sharpening. I realize that those with resolution-impairment (i.e., people with good color vision) see the world in terms of blobs of color, and oversharpening can compensate for that deficiency by making it appear that there is more detail in the picture than what they'd be able to see normally. But since I have high-resolution vision (being color-blind), overly-sharpened pictures come out looking like pictures of sand. There comes a point where sharpening in software turns into a form of distracting distortion. It takes "grainy" to a new level otherwise achieved only with very high ISO values. ...

... That could be a test for color-blindness. people who ignore color as contrast data focus instead on the texture (complexity of the waveform) of the reflected light instead - and feathers don't look anything like bark from that perspective. So people who can see the birds right off are probably color-blind (as well as resolution-enhanced).

When I was in high school, they told the Army I was color blind. So the Army started twisting my arm to quit school and go to be a point-man on infantry patrols in VietNam; they figured I wouldn't be fooled by the color-camouflage (right on that point) and that I'd be able to spot the snipers in the trees long enough to shoot 'em down. Yeah, right. I figured my life-expectancy once in that job would be about fifteen minutes. That war was a big reason for my having been the first of my family to attend college (that and Lyndon Johnson's "great society" program - they were generous with student aid at that time). ...

... Red square, eh? I thought that was a place in Moscow! The reason I didn't go into electical engineering was because I couldn't tell resistors apart - they're color coded and I'm color-blind. So "red" doesn't really show up for me. But now I know it's supposed to be there, I'll look for it and research its use. It might be one of those things I've turned off in the settings menu as excess gim-cracky. Incidentally, the color-blindness has an interesting effect - since I have fewer relatively huge color receptors per square inch of retina, I've got gazillions more of the tiny white/black receptors - huge increase in resolution and light-gathering capability, which is why I'm so picky about things looking sharp. (Also why I almost never mess with the colors as recorded by the camera in postprocessing.) ...

And here's a prior thread on the same subject:
A colorblind photographer? - PentaxForums.com

Last edited by dlhawes; 12-11-2021 at 06:09 AM.
12-11-2021, 06:51 AM   #18
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QuoteOriginally posted by dlhawes Quote
That's because I can see Bambi tucked down among the tall grass from much farther off (i.e., arrow-shooting distance) than a similar man with normal color vision because I am not fooled by color cameoflage and the texture, or timbre of the light, if you will, reflected off the deer is so different from that from the weeds, that Bambi sticks out like a sore thumb. Hence, my ancestors lived to reproduce, and their children lived to reproduce, while other people's children starved. It's a "we're just coming out of the Ice Age kind of thing".
And daltonism isn't more present because the rest of the ancestors didn't see the bright colour and ate the poisonous animal .
12-11-2021, 07:03 AM - 1 Like   #19
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Useful site. There’s a color blindness simulator there also.

https://www.color-blindness.com/

12-11-2021, 07:10 AM   #20
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QuoteOriginally posted by Serkevan Quote
And daltonism isn't more present because the rest of the ancestors didn't see the bright colour and ate the poisonous animal .
I reckon it's a good thing none of my ancestors are from the Amazon Valley. But there is one thing that occurs to me now that you mention it: every poisonous animal I can think of has a unique combination of surface texture and patterns. I might confuse the texture and patterns of a juvenile black racer with an Eastern rattler at first glance, but since I'd avoid both of them, I don't get bit. Similarly, the coral snake and the king snake - it doesn't really matter what the colors are, the pattern's distinctive. And very, very few people actually see the world with no color at all.
12-11-2021, 10:13 AM - 2 Likes   #21
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QuoteOriginally posted by FozzFoster Quote
I'm red-green colour deficient - or so the doctors tell me.
I think ya ya'll are the mutants instead.
Exactly, them doctors don't know what they're talking about. I'm convinced there's some plotting and prearranging telling people what numbers on those silly dot plate things, while excluding me to make me feel bad. There's no way there's any numbers on half of those

It's funny, because I can easily identify the different shades of those dots, just can't make out any number, even when I've been told it and had it traced out. That being said, the second "standard" test after the plates is the Farnsworth D-15 colour test - where you arrange a set of disks in order of shade, I have zero problems whatsoever.

I've never noticed any problems in real life, green traffic lights are obviously green and red traffic lights are obviously red. That being said, I have had people tell me the colours of my photos are off, and to adjust it a bit this way - I'll do that and they'll say "great, so much better!" but I don't see one darn thing different.

So in short, I ignore it in everyday life, and generally use AWB. I have a grey card I keep meaning to use to get colour critical stuff for portraits and such, but never bother digging it out. At the end of the day, I shoot photos for my enjoyment, so I adjust until it looks nice for me - it's not like I'm using a well calibrated monitor anyways.
12-11-2021, 01:39 PM - 1 Like   #22
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I think the human brain is amazing tool that overcome surprising array of issues. Our eyes are actually quite imperfect in many ways (including severe distortion) but the brain learns to correct for it. So I think a bit colour blindness is not going to be a big deal.
I'm lucky to have reasonable colour sight myself but I think I would be doing the exact same things if I didn't.

I know many people prefer really intense colours in their images (my preference is to err on the side of realism), but I suspect this has little or nothing to do with colour blindness (as the brain compensates anyway).

12-11-2021, 01:51 PM   #23
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QuoteOriginally posted by UncleVanya Quote
Useful site. There’s a color blindness simulator there also.
I've used that to show my wife what I can actually see. Useful from that perspective!

---------- Post added 12-11-21 at 01:52 PM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by kiwi_jono Quote
I know many people prefer really intense colours in their images
Modern smartphones seem to do this by default.

---------- Post added 12-11-21 at 02:00 PM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by RGlasel Quote
A cousin of mine is so strongly colour blind that red and green traffic lights look like different shades of grey.
This actually can be a problem. The green lights here in Australia look white (or maybe off-white) to me. Red and orange lights look like the same colour with differing brightness. Sometimes a local Govt will populate street corners with illuminated street signs, which are bang on the same colour I perceive a green light to be. I have twice in my life (when I was in my 20's) ran a red light because I have mistaken a street sign as a green light - thankfully no other traffic around, and I realised what was happening after the second occurrence (just need to take more care to identify the actual traffic light cluster)!
12-11-2021, 02:26 PM   #24
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QuoteOriginally posted by kiwi_jono Quote
I think the human brain is amazing tool that overcome surprising array of issues. Our eyes are actually quite imperfect in many ways (including severe distortion) but the brain learns to correct for it. So I think a bit colour blindness is not going to be a big deal.
I'm lucky to have reasonable colour sight myself but I think I would be doing the exact same things if I didn't.

I know many people prefer really intense colours in their images (my preference is to err on the side of realism), but I suspect this has little or nothing to do with colour blindness (as the brain compensates anyway).
It is the inability to distinguish very different colours (wavelengths) that is a bigger issue than perceived saturation.
12-11-2021, 04:24 PM   #25
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QuoteOriginally posted by Serkevan Quote
And daltonism isn't more present because the rest of the ancestors didn't see the bright colour and ate the poisonous animal
Interesting theory however in examples found among animals: Apex predators* in particular often have less than stellar colour vision and I'd say their evolutionary survivability is markedly higher than humans. That blows a gaping hole in your argument over the advantages of colour vision. Prehistoric humans weren't anywhere near the gifted spectrum when it came to decision making compared to us more evolved humans (though there is evidence to the contrary e.g Anti-vaxxers).


*Take Felids for example, their vision has remarkably high sharpness and unparalleled depth perception - superb for terrestrial hunting, but it is pretty bad at discerning the things we take for granted. Raptors also have exquisitely sharp vision but due to their ability to see into the ultraviolet spectrum ( which is useful for tracking their prey) their colour vision is well below average compared to a human. Cuttlefish are well known for their ability to change their skins texture and colour as active camouflage and for hunting but as far as we can tell they are completely colorblind.

Last edited by Digitalis; 12-11-2021 at 04:32 PM.
12-11-2021, 04:38 PM   #26
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
That blows a gaping hole in your argument over the advantages of colour vision.
And clearly jokes don't translate well in text
I'm well aware that colour acuity isn't the only thing that determines successful vision. We aren't particularly special there.


Though, incidentally, my ex's cat is perfectly incapable of missing a very obvious treat on the carpet until I grab it for him . Not sure whether that's poor eyesight or His Royal Fluffness being a lazy bum, though. I'm inclined to believe it's the latter.
12-12-2021, 02:43 AM   #27
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QuoteOriginally posted by Digitalis Quote
Interesting theory however in examples found among animals: Apex predators* in particular often have less than stellar colour vision and I'd say their evolutionary survivability is markedly higher than humans. That blows a gaping hole in your argument over the advantages of colour vision. Prehistoric humans weren't anywhere near the gifted spectrum when it came to decision making compared to us more evolved humans (though there is evidence to the contrary e.g Anti-vaxxers). ...
I suspected and @Serkevan has now confirmed, that his witty repartee was in response to my having said that, as among neolithic humans, color blindness would have been an environmental adaptation which reduced the effectiveness of color based cameoflage in prey animals, giving the color-blind hunter a culinary advantage over other neolithic humans.

As to the cat's inability to see the treat - that's because it isn't moving.
12-12-2021, 08:24 AM - 1 Like   #28
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Protonomalous deficient here; I'm missing some of the deeper reds that the rest of you can see. If something is red on a black background, it might be visible, or it might not appear at all. It depends on the redness of the red.

But digital photography isn't much affected. I realized this a few years ago when at a hockey game where I couldn't make out the red scoreboard numerals. I took a picture that included the scoreboard, and found that I could read the score just fine when looking at the picture file. Although a camera sensor is sensitive to all of the normal human spectrum out past 700nm, it stores only three numbers for R/G/B. When viewed on a computer screen, the fact that "there is red in this pixel at this intensity" doesn't include specific wavelength info, so it gets represented by a frequency band centering around a reference red, probably a little under 650nm, which is visible to me.

... and that must mean I could also see things when shooting in live view that I wouldn't through a pentaprism, though I haven't explored the idea.
12-12-2021, 12:33 PM   #29
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QuoteOriginally posted by Sluggo Quote

... and that must mean I could also see things when shooting in live view that I wouldn't through a pentaprism, though I haven't explored the idea.
... or with an EVF instead of OVF?

This sounds similar to the concept used by "colour correction" lenses, which remove overlapping wavelengths that confuse the red and green retinal cones.

Are reds easier to see on TV compared to real life?
12-12-2021, 03:21 PM   #30
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QuoteOriginally posted by Paul the Sunman Quote
This sounds similar to the concept used by "colour correction" lenses, which remove overlapping wavelengths that confuse the red and green retinal cones.
My son likes playing a certain computer game, and I couldn't tell what he was talking about with the colours of various elements. We dug in and found a set of colour blindness settings - switched it on for deuteranope, and bingo, things were suddenly identifiable.

I wonder if this could be tuned....move some of those frequencies to where they need to be (as you imply). I guess it's a little organic though...different for each person.

I really do wish that people would take extra care when compiling colour coded charts and graphs though. It's easy enough to include some textures, rather than using solid green, orange, red, brown, blue, purple...all of which can be hard to pick apart for me personally!
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