Colour Blind

Hi All,

I'm not sure there's a forum for this question, so I'll ask it here!

I am colour blind (red/green, I think) and so often find it difficult to distinguish between some colours. When I was young, I would colour in purple sky instead of dark blue, light brown would be confused with some reds, especially the "maroon" sort of colour.

I recently combined 3 photos in Photoshop for a canvas that my father in law wanted - my wife said to make the background blue - I think I made it that funny green colour - Is it turquoise?

Anyway, I just thought I'd ask what experience any others had with colour blindness and photography. Are any of you colour blind? Does it affect your work? How do you get around it? Do people comment on your strange use of colour in your photos?

Thanks

Craig

Hi Craig,
Interesesting topic.
I can't say that I've ever thought about it because I don't suffer from it.
Having said that, I can't even begin to imagine the problems that would create for you.
Interested to see the responses

I'll get in before anyone else does:

I have thought about working in B&W exclusively!

Craig

PS: apparently colour blind people can actually, in some cases see better in the dark - their perception of luminosity and so on can be better than full colour sighted people. Maybe my B&W photography will be better?

My dad is color blind as well. Thankfully, I did not get that trait.

His is more with dark blues and blacks.

I think a good way to work around it is to maybe just focus more texture, shading, and depth rather than color. The place that would make it hardest I think, is in PP.

Actually, that's not a bad idea. It would be an advantage to see the shades of gray which make B&W much harder to shoot for than color.

I'm colorblind. I cannot pass a color dot test at all. A long time ago I took a physical for going into the Air Force. At the time I got a 0/14 on the color dot test. While I see colors, I have some issues.

Despite that, I simply shoot in color and keep color adjustments to a minimum. I'll do white balance as needed, though when I do any of it with sliders in Aperture I usually only adjust the temperature. I recently bought a set of black/grey/white cards for both white balance and color correction. They really work well as far as I've tested them!

I've done a bit of tinting, but only on one or two things. For instance, an apple I'd photographed was extremely dark. I specifically brought up the tint in the apple, using a dropper and slider.

I may not see colors very well, but I still like them. Mostly I figure nature does a pretty good job of choosing them. Though I've had some "fun" discussions in the past about colors and my choices of them, I've never had anyone comment on the colors in my photos.

Use the Color Picker probe in PS to translate colors into numbers. In the example you gave, for instance, if the background was pure blue it would have RGB numbers like 0/0/250. If the read-out was 0/250/250, it was cyan. Measure the colors in other people's photos and you will get to know approximately what the values should be. E.g., a tone for Caucasian skin that I like is 200/170/150.

Here is a chart of skin tones:

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same here. Discovered when I got my first glasses at age 30. Color blind is not many think it to be, i.e., can't distinguish a green light from red on a traffic signal. Many variations exist. For me, it's more of a hue or color pallette issue. For example, a car that is painted a champagne color could easily be a shade of purple to green to my eyes, depending on lighting conditions. Also, colors in the brown/orange/amber are really difficult to discern just how brown something is compared to how orange it may be.

When in doubt, I put a known color next to the color in question to determine it's relationship to the known color. It's a real pain trying to buy clothes when you can't tell a pair of navy pants from black or whether a coat is tan or green!

Thank goodness our cameras render color fairly accurately or I'd be in REAL trouble!

dave

colour?

Todd Lambert wrote in post #9704648
My dad is color blind as well. Thankfully, I did not get that trait.

you get it from your mother's father. My Dad is also color blind. If my sister ever has kids, they might be too.

jacobsen1 wrote in post #9707059
colour?

Yep, coloUr - the way it's supposed to be spelled. How it was spelled before "you guys" got hold of our language and mangled it!

cmansell wrote in post #9704607
...I am colour blind (red/green, I think) and so often find it difficult to distinguish between some colours. When I was young, I would colour in purple sky instead of dark blue, light brown would be confused with some reds, especially the "maroon" sort of colour...

I am partially color blind to red and green as well, and I also experienced similar problems with crayons when I was a kid.

Within three months of picking up photography, I started shooting in black & white only (well, converting color to B&W), and I suppose my color blindness was a factor in this decision.

I guess I am color blind, because I don't see that red "u" at all!

I am red/green deficient (deuteranopic) and this thread raises a number of interesting questions for me too. By the way, I also have macular degeneration, and now regard myself as a blind photographer.

Both the colour deficiency and the macular degeneration are relevant here, because in daylight I tend to get a lot of glare, I presume mainly from the blue/violet/UV end of the specctrum. It is true for me at least that night-time vision can be clearer because you're taking away the complications of the colour spectrum. A pair of brown sunglasses during the day, so long as they're not too dark, help to clarify things, too, though that doesn't help at all with your colour sense!

So why don't I take black-and-white photos? Well, constitutionally, I just don't like b&W that much, and it reminds me of the bad old days of B&W telly and no choice but to have B&W photos. I love colour, even if I am incompetent to handle it properly.

Most of the time, my approach to colour is not to fiddle with it. If you've got your camera set up the way you want it, perhaps manipulating colours isn't going to be that important for the finished image, unless you're making exotic digital art.

Interestingly, I can see the reds better on my computer monitor than I can while I'm taking my photos, and this gives me a useful check on whether I'm getting the shots I want. I tested this to the max last autumn when all those confusing reds, golds, browns and oranges were rife in the environment. It took a lot of guesswork to try to get the right images, but I seem to have developed a pretty good intuition about what's going to look right.

Occasionally, I have bumped up the blue in photos a slight bit to make them look more like the way I remembered the scene I was taking. But this sets me quite a conundrum. Is my membery playing tricks? Will the finished image look right to you as well as me? I might have a tendency to overcompensate for my own visual deficiencies, so that's why I'm pretty cautious about this.

There is a blog called the Colorblind Photographer, which may be of interest.

http://www.thecolorbli​ndphotographer.com/

An informative post, Vip_uc, and the link you gave is very good. I bookmarked it as I need to read all of it for the great information it contains!

Thanks!

Craig

I have some slight red/green colour blindness as well - it doesn't hold me back as a photographer though.

When I was a kid I'd confuse some shades of brown and purple etc (my dad had a purple car at one point and I'd see brown cars and get them mistaken) but as I've got older I am more adept at identifying colours.