Apparently 1 out of 255 women and 1 out of 12 men have some form of colour vision deficiency.
That's not good news if you're a photographer, you're processing the photos you've just taken and you're trying to get them looking right on the monitor.
But you can test your colour vision here.
On the screen you are presented with 4 rows of coloured tiles, all mixed up, and you have to sort them in to the correct colour order by dragging and dropping, up and down each row.
It's not as easy as it seems! It's best done in a darkened room - which is also the way you should work on your photographs if you're really serious about getting them to look their best.
Why men should have a far higher level of colour vision deficiency than women I don't know. Maybe that's why we men tend to be less concerned about the colour of a car and more interested in its performance.
That's not good news if you're a photographer, you're processing the photos you've just taken and you're trying to get them looking right on the monitor.
But you can test your colour vision here.
On the screen you are presented with 4 rows of coloured tiles, all mixed up, and you have to sort them in to the correct colour order by dragging and dropping, up and down each row.
It's not as easy as it seems! It's best done in a darkened room - which is also the way you should work on your photographs if you're really serious about getting them to look their best.
Why men should have a far higher level of colour vision deficiency than women I don't know. Maybe that's why we men tend to be less concerned about the colour of a car and more interested in its performance.
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7 comments:
It's not lack of interest for men, but the genetic coding for some of the colour receptors in your eye is on the X chromosome - of which women have two, and males only one. So men are more likely to suffer from a single bad one given by their parents.
Interesting test btw, for a photographer. I scored 16 on my macbook which looks okay but I'm really curious if it would do it on my colour-calibrated desktop PC... I will check later!
Thanks Vince. Yes, it will certainly be interesting to see how the results differ between different computers/monitors. Can you let us know?
It would also be interesting to do the test in a darkened room as against doing it in ambient light.
As for the genes ... I should have known that as an ex-biologist. Thanks for that information Vince.
I've just done the test myself and scored 12, which is not bad. The lower the score the better, and they tell you how you compare to others in your age range.
Apparently my discrimination is low in the orangey-green and greeny-blue areas (they show you a little chart with your results).
How did anyone else do?
Hi Alistair - I had great fun doing the test again on my photo editing pc which I calibrate regularly, and I had the perfect score (0)! So the environment and screen does matter, which should come as no surprise.
Oh, about the genetics of colour vision: Scientific American has a nice article here! (hope the link works in blog comments!)
Congratulations Vince! A brilliant score. And it's interesting to see how much the working environment affects the result.
The moral - if you want your photos to come out accurately, work on a calibrated screen in a neutrally-lit environment.
Thanks for the link, too. Looks like it works.
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