Color blindness? Post what YOU see!

[NarwhalZ]

Color blindness

Ok! so I stumbled across a question that I have just asked myself...

What do certain color blinded people see?

If you are colorblind feel free to share with me and the community what you see when you shine a certain wavelength on a wall for instance. ​

 

[kipperhughes]

Color blindness

Ok! so I stumbled across a question that I have just asked myself...

What do certain color blinded people see?

If you are colorblind feel free to share with me and the community what you see when you shine a certain wavelength on a wall for instance. ​

I recently had same question as I'm currently doing a project at Uni where I'm using lasers so needed to see what colours colour blind people can see and if that affected my laser colour choice. I tested out a red and a green laser pen on a colour blind person on a brown background and they said they could see the colours fine and that they could distinguish between the different colours. He said for some reason he can distinguish laser colours easily but plane normal colours he had trouble with.

I also downloaded a filter program called Color Oracle Color Oracle which allows you to do empathetic modelling on your computer screen using the program to place filters so you see what they would see. Not hundred percent accurate but gives you a good idea.

 

[Gabe]

[RANT]
It never ceases to make me wonder for hours, about the fact that some peope would see a different 'green' than what you would see. Like if you and another person were to look at a green wall, you would both call it 'green', but if you were to see what the other person sees, you would call their 'green' blue, or yellow, or a completely new colour. And same the other way around. This could explain why people have different opinions on what colours look good together, or other topics like that. It brings into concern just how amazing communication is. It's like, we all have thoughts and feelings and ideas, but we can't share them directly. So we have to learn this code, which only imperfectly describes our feelings, and we send these codes to one another, and we try to convert these codes back into the feelings they were originally intended to mean. And our only way to learn these codes is THROUGH these codes, which seems impossible. To make it even more complicated, there are different codes ENTIRELY, each of which use different rules to interpret these codes. I just think it's incredible that we can communicate at all, nevermind switching between these different codes.
Sorry, [/RANT]

 

[Cyparagon]

if you were to see what the other person sees, you would call their 'green' blue, or yellow, or a completely new colour.

I don't think so. Our eyes are all programmed by roughly the same genetic instructions. A cone cell is a cone cell. If they varied, you'd have reports of people seeing objects change color as they moved across the field of vision.

 

[Gabe]

I suppose that could be true, Cyp. I was thinking moreover the way our brains interpret the signals vary from person to person, in the same way eye colour varies from person to person, along with other genetic variations that aren't affected by the environment. I think the real point to topics like this isn't more about finding the answer, it's moreover the fact that, in this case, we can't directly compare what each person sees, and therefore we don't have solid actual 'proof' that our hypothesis is correct. Yet, that is

 

[NarwhalZ]

It is quite an interesting topic. I have heard of someone at our class seeing blue chairs instead of red. some other person can't see red on white since they blend in.

 

[Teej]

I think the issue is that we don't "see with our eyes" : we see with our brain.

So, no matter what our photo receptors send to our brains, our brains still have to interpret it.

This is one of the reasons optical illusions work...For example, our vision is in 2D, but, we construct 3D images of it in our brain.

Our brain interprets some areas as shadow, and, then assumes that the light is on the opposite side so as to cast the shadow, and, that the colors IN the shadow are what we'd see w/o the shadow, and so forth.

So, an optical illusion that gives a checker board of black and white squares will even see a black square as a white square if the lighting is adjusted to make them think the white is in a shadow, and THAT'S why it appears dark...rather than knowing its actually dark, and that there's no shadow.

The same with the light cast by different sources. If you saw an isolated piece of cloth of a particular color, you might call it one color. If you saw it as part of a larger item, with other colors around it, illuminated by varying wavelengths, etc, you might call it another color.

So, the "eye's" version of the color is not really available to us, ALL we get is OUR BRAIN'S interpretation of what the sensors relayed.

If, for example, we all agree that shorter wavelengths gradate into certain colors, in a reliable pattern, and, gradate into certain colors as the wavelengths get longer, we can certainly agree on what we CALL the resultant colors, and reliably communicate this to others.

What we might never KNOW, is if the perceived colors, in the brains of the observers, look the same to them as to us.

We are TAUGHT the names of the colors...so if I am told what I see is red, that will be what I call red. I might, in my brain, imagine that this is what YOU imagine in your brain as "BLUE".

We will both say the fire engine is red....because that's what the color was taught to us as. But MY red might be your yellow, and your red might be my green, and so forth.

We would BOTH see a prism's light broken into a rainbow, etc...and both see the same transition of colors as the wavelengths change, but, in our brains, the imagined colors could be transitioning with a different set of colors.

For example, the rainbow is described as having certain "colors", but, most of that impression is because OUR BRAINS divide the continuous transition into recognized colors...and PERCEIVE it as a particular number of bands of color.

IE: The orangey part is from here too hear, and the yellowy parts are from there to there...

...despite the fact that its a continuous spectrum.

Its all happening in your brain. So, we definitely see the same leaf as "green", because, whatever our brain said leaves look like we were taught is called "green"...so leaves are green.

But we have no way of knowing if the green in my brain is the same as the green in your brain.

 

[Gabe]

Hahha, precisely what I was trying to say Teej, just much better worded! :beer:

 

[Cyparagon]

I think the issue is that we don't "see with our eyes"

Don't get all Jaden Smith on us. This thread is about color blindness. Color blindness is a deficiency of the eye, not the brain (in the vast majority of cases).

 

[Gabe]

But how can lasers be real if our eyes aren't real?
And yes, colour blindness is a deficiency of the cone cells, but the way I see it (no pun intended) it's a deficiency of the signals that get sent to the brain. Where colours become indistinguishable from one another, like in green/red CB, or in total colour blindness, where the signals for different colours are completely indistinguishable from one another.

 

[NarwhalZ]

What you are all saying seems very accurate to what I think. It is most proberbly to do with the signals from eye to brain as it seems more of a 'confusion' so the brain must play a big part in this.
But what we need to understand is that everyone is different. All our senses are different. So for instance that is why some people like the smell a a type of perfume and someone else doesn't. This was mentioned above by teej about greens being different in each brain.

 

[Gabe]

If I may, I would like to link a video on this topic
http://youtu.be/evQsOFQju08

 

[djQUAN]

I came across this a while back.

Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue | Color Perception

 

[Zathras]

I knew/know 2 people, a past co-worker and my current boss, who are color blind and the answers to what they 'see' are different. But the one thing they agreed on was that they don't know what the different 'colors' are, as everything they see is the 'same color', just in a different shade.

I discussed this with the past co-worker as to what he saw, and his reply was everything is the same 'color', just a different shade of it. He said the word color really had no meaning to him as everything looked the same. I showed him various colors, told him their name (red, yellow, etc.) and asked him if he saw any difference in them other than their 'shade'. No, was the reply. BUT the one 'color' he did see was GREEN. Except everything was green just different shades of it. He learned to differentiate between actual colors by associating a 'shade' to a 'color'.

Interesting.

I didn't pursue this depth of questioning with my boss, as, well, he is my boss. And as interesting as it may be to ask someone questions, it's also a bit insensitive it interrogate someone about their handicap.

But basically, the different shades of a 'single color' was a consistent reply. I haven't asked him if he sees any 1 particular color though. Maybe another time.

Interesting though, is that he is an electrical engineer and has mastered the color bands on resistors despite the handicap.

The brain is a wonderful thing.

 

[Gabe]

That's really interesting. In that article djQUAN linked, it mentioned how some receptors in the cones can almost become like other ones, in a sense of like a green receptor picking up and sending out red signals. I'm guessing with your co-worker and your boss, their cones were only sending green signals in that one case.
I would imagine this is what they would see, and how they could distinguish between different colours: The Land Effect

 

[Teej]

I knew/know 2 people, a past co-worker and my current boss, who are color blind and the answers to what they 'see' are different. But the one thing they agreed on was that they don't know what the different 'colors' are, as everything they see is the 'same color', just in a different shade.

I discussed this with the past co-worker as to what he saw, and his reply was everything is the same 'color', just a different shade of it. He said the word color really had no meaning to him as everything looked the same. I showed him various colors, told him their name (red, yellow, etc.) and asked him if he saw any difference in them other than their 'shade'. No, was the reply. BUT the one 'color' he did see was GREEN. Except everything was green just different shades of it. He learned to differentiate between actual colors by associating a 'shade' to a 'color'.

Interesting.



I didn't pursue this depth of questioning with my boss, as, well, he is my boss. And as interesting as it may be to ask someone questions, it's also a bit insensitive it interrogate someone about their handicap.

But basically, the different shades of a 'single color' was a consistent reply. I haven't asked him if he sees any 1 particular color though. Maybe another time.

Interesting though, is that he is an electrical engineer and has mastered the color bands on resistors despite the handicap.

The brain is a wonderful thing.

This is also what happen when you're night adapted, you lose color vision, but rarely realize it.

I've done experiments for example where people leave a group wearing colored jackets, etc...say red or yellow....and head off into the darkness.

They then appear at the end of a long sight line, perhaps a few hundred meters away, and the "searchers" use flashlights to "find them".

The group being searched for have changed to blue and light blue jackets, but, the searchers will say they SEE red or yellow jackets in their flashlight beams.

Using High CRI lights, etc, changed nothing. Once the searchers had become night adapted, they were essentially seeing in black and white....and interpreting colors based upon expectations in hue.

The lighter blue were seen as yellow, the darker blue were seen as red....as the lighter/darker aspect was all they could actually see.

If the searchers' vision was allowed to lose the night adaptation, and return to normal daylight vision, after a while, they once again can see the actual jacket colors....albeit they had to be a LOT CLOSER, as the day light vision/fovea line of sight, required so much more light to resolve anything...they could not see ANYTHING a few hundred meters away using the same flashlights...a few hundred FEET, if lucky typically.