The perfect Wall Color

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It was a very quick decision and the job was done in a couple of hours — our colored bedroom wall.

First we wanted many colored walls, then we stepped back and stayed with white walls and sometimes we move forward again and paint a wall in a fresh color.

The question is always, “which color is the right color”. For me as a colorblind this is a valuable question and also for my not colorblind wife. But we both look at it from a different perspective.

I definitely choose colors based on other visual impressions than somebody with normal color vision. So every time the same question arises: Does the chosen color fit for both.

Often this isn’t that easy and I have to agree to a compromise. Yes, most often it is me because I’m the one which can’t see the true colors and I know about it.

Now, which is the perfect wall color? I don’t know. But I have to feel ok with it and in the case of our bedroom wall it has to be a chosen color of my wife.

And which color did we choose? That’s the best part of the story: I don’t know either. It’s something between blue, violet, aubergine and pink. Blue with a touch of red. I can’t tell you and even our visitors are arguing about it which makes me feel a bit better, because I’m not the only one which has problems with matching colors and color names.

Color Translation — Readable Diagrams for the Colorblind

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It can be really annoying if you find some descriptive graphics or a nice diagram and you can’t decipher it because it is color coded. Even if you are suffering from red-green color blindness — which is the most common form of color vision deficiencies — you aren’t spared to come across such diagrams.

Have a look at the following diagram of the climate classification. If you are red-green colorblind it can be a big problem to distinguish Tropical from Cold and also Dry from Temperate zones. In the first case it doesn’t really matter because the different zones are far apart form each other. The latter case is worse.

Climate Classification
Climate Classification

In such cases Protanope Tools comes in very handy. With this little online tool you can change the color spectrum and make those undistinguishable parts of color coded diagrams visible. Protanope Tools is made for red-green colorblind persons and offers two different possibilities:

  1. Shift from red-green to blue-yellow.
  2. Shift from red-green to green-magenta.

Have a look at the following two diagrams which were created with Protanope Tools based on the above image. The colors change dramatically. In both cases the climate zones Dry and Temperate are clearly distinguishable. Even though Cold looks almost the same as Temperate and also Tropical and Dry look almost the same if you suffer from a strong red-green color blindness.

Climate Classification - Blue Yellow
Climate Classification – Blue Yellow
Climate Classification - Magenta Green
Climate Classification – Magenta Green

Protanope Tools offers the possibility to color translate any image. You can just drag the two bookmarklets below to your browser bookmarks and this way you always have the two direct color translations ready whenever you come across a colorful diagram.

The best case when you colorize your own diagrams is and will always be the one, where nobody needs a separate tool to understand your message. Be aware of color blindness when you color code your own graphics and for every other case Protanope Tools will help you out.

Update: To get a better understanding of what goes on behind the scenes of these color translations, read the article on Simple Color Translation Algorithms, which reveals the two algorithms used above.

Color, What? What Color?

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I just found a nice little video at YouTube about Michael, a colorblind boy. In this short little sequence the makers of the video try to describe how color blindness affects his everyday life.

This was for an in-class film project class at Adelphi University. It’s an exaggeration of our classmate’s Michael’s life living with color blindness.

The video is categorized under Comedy, so don’t take it to seriously…

Color, What? What Color?

Carnival of Colors I — Blue

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A few weeks ago I decided to start my own blog carnival on a very broadly defined topic: Carnival of Colors.

Whenever you write something on your weblog in any way related to colors which you would like to include into the next release of this carnival just contact me through the contact page.

The first release of this carnival isn’t that big. I received only two valuable contributions which sums up to three when counting my post as well. Carnival of Colors I is issued under the topic…

Blue

« Thinking about blue birds there is one which comes to my mind instantly, the Blue Tit, about which I just learned that its scientific name is parus caeruleus and it is well known in Europe but quite exotic in America. If you want to learn more about blueish birds and the term cerulean visit Color Me Cerulean posted at 10,000 Birds from Mike Bergin. »

« Maybe you sometimes feel blue and are looking for a nice change. Why not give it a go by creating your own scrapbook? Check out the secrets of Design Team Member – Pam Aylor at BeyondPaper.net and find your own favorite layouts. »

« My red-green color blindness gives me a lot of difficulties in naming colors. But one color I’m always quite certain about is blue which looks quite different to all other colors even to my eyes. Have a look at the Ishihara Plates Color Blindness Test here at Colblindor to learn which colors you can distinguish best — or maybe not at all. »

This was the first issue of Carnival of Colors. I hope you enjoyed it despite its shortness. See you again at Carnival of Colors II the first of next month.

Can Dogs see Colors?

Animals 56 Comments

The question if dogs are colorblind, specifically red-green colorblind or if dogs only see shades of gray is raised among dog owners quite often. Even on the internet the question concerning dog vision is discussed controversial. But there is a simple answer to that question which I would like to share with you supported by some scientific resources.

Actually there are two distinct questions which I would like to ask, answer and set in relation hereafter:

  1. Can dogs see colors? — Answer: Yes
  2. Are dogs colorblind? — Answer: Yes

Let me explain this two answers to you a bit more in detail.

Dogs can see colors
Dogs not only see in shades of gray but also can see distinct colors contrary to what most people belief. About one hundred years ago some scientific tests were made to find out more about the color vision of dogs. But these tests weren’t that scientific as they thought and the researchers concluded only that color vision doesn’t play a part in the daily life of a dog.

Only about 90 years later distinct researches have shown that dogs can perceive colors. Neitz, Geist and Jacobs researched in 1989 the color vision of domestic dogs and found the following facts:

  1. Dogs have two different color receptors in their eyes and therefore are dichromats.
  2. One color receptor peaks at the blue-violet range, the other at the yellow-green range.
  3. Conclusion: Dogs are green-blind which is one form of red-green color blindness also called deuteranopia.

This results were support by later researches of Jacobs with colleagues in 1993 and Miller and Murphy in 1995.

Dogs are colorblind
This directly leads us to the second question concerning the color blindness of dogs. Colorblind doesn’t relate to not see any colors but describes the fact that you can’t see the same color range as somebody with normal vision. Because of that any kind of color vision deficiency is called color blindness. Therefore dogs are colorblind because of their dichromatic color vision.

Colors dogs can’t distinguish
Actually the color spectrum made up of wavelengths of light is the same to all of us. Only the perception of those colors can be quite different. As dogs only have two different color receptors in their eyes they have problems to distinguish certain colors:

  • Red — Orange — Green
  • Greenish Blue — Gray
  • Different shades of Purple

The list is not completed and there are a lot of different shades which can’t be differentiated if you are colorblind. And the conclusion is dogs can see colors but are at the same time colorblind.

More facts on the vision of dogs can be found in the book Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training, Vol. 1: Adaptation and Learning by Steven R. Lindsay.

Meet with other Colorblind Women

People 15 Comments

During the last days I was contacted by colorblind women seeking other colorblind women to share thoughts, ask questions and just to talk. I was looking for a way to make it possible to meet and discuss. Finally I set up an own forum about color blindness here at Colblindor, where everybody can join and talk about color blindness viewed through colorblind eyes.

Color blindness in women is very rare. Only about 0.5% of all women have some kind of color vision deficiency and often this isn’t even recognized. Most people think color blindness is only man’s business – but that is wrong.

Because the biology behind red-green color blindness tells us, that much more men are colorblind (approximately 8%) this doesn’t mean that women can not be colorblind. Specially very uncommon cases like tritanopia (blue-yellow color blindness) and monochromacy (complete color blindness) are equally distributed among men and women.

Update: Because the forum was mostly a huge spam trap I removed it again. Sorry if any inconveniences arise through this.

One Year Anniversary of Colblindor

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It was exactly one year ago when I started blogging in the name of Colblindor. Well it wasn’t really the start of my blogging career. I started a few weeks earlier writing about everything and nothing. But soon I realized that this wasn’t my way in blogging and at this point Colblindor was born.

First of all I was looking around for a topic to write about. A topic I new something about, I had a personal connection and something that wasn’t covered by a lot of others. And the search of a topic ended up at color blindness.

The first time was tough. I had to do a lot of research, didn’t know how to write blog posts and was kneeling right into it, posting around once a day. It was a good time where I learned a lot about color blindness, blogging and a lot more. A lot of tests with designs, plugins, communities and a lot more followed which filled my everyday life besides job and family.

After a few month I was quite happy with what I achieved but an event let me stop writing for several month. We bought a house. This took up a lot of time, effort and work.

But after a few months of hard work I started again with blogging. Why? Because I missed it, I needed again a change and I just wanted to come back. My comeback wasn’t that strong. I posted only a few times a month and slowly kept it going.

Again a few months later visitor numbers started to increase and I started even to earn some money through advertisement. So I decided to give it another try and start posting at least two times a week. It’s not that easy for me because there is a lot to do besides writing about color blindness: job, family, renovating our house, sport and so on.

And that’s where I am at the moment and as a reward I can see the traffic counts increase.

Some facts as of 21st February 2007:

  • 132 posts
  • 141 comments (with over 35’000 rejected by Akismet)
  • Average of 170 unique visitors a day
  • Average of 378 pageviews a day
  • 36 RSS subscriptions
  • Total earnings of 92$

Most popular articles:

BTW I constructed the name Colblindor while looking for a unique naming for my weblog. I just played around with the words color and blind. And I am still quite happy with the brand I created. As happy as I hopefully soon will switch to color-blindness.com.

Ishihara Plates Color Blindness Test in a Leaflet

Tests 109 Comments

Unfortunately those leaflets are not available anymore. But you can find the whole set of 38 Ishihara plates in my article: Ishihara’s Test for Colour Deficiency: 38 Plates Edition.

Just recently I found this new Web 2.0 application where you can produce your own leaflets. A leaflet is a miniature web site which can be created online and distributed through an URL or an embedding link.

I thought this could be a great way to show the 35 Ishihara plates to test your color blindness. All plates show a big circle consisting of many little colorful circles. Because the circles differ in color and brightness it can get really tough for a colorblind person to see the shown numbers or traces.

If you take the following color blindness test be aware that those pictures were scanned and are now reproduced by your display. This can alter the colors. Because a color blindness test relies solely on correct color reproduction you shouldn’t take the results for granted. If you really want to check your color blindness you should see your local doctor.

Could you perform as you expected? Or did the plates show that you really are red-green colorblind? I hope you could spot at least the number in the first and the trace in the last plate, otherwise you may have a real severe color vision problem…

Windows Vista Upgrade List

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Windows Vista Upgrade List
Windows Vista Upgrade List

Yesterday I bought a new laptop. What I definitely wanted to have included in the package I bought was the new operating system form Microsoft: Windows Vista.

And just after I made the deal I found this upgrade list for Windows Vista in a newsjournal of a local book and software seller. Not that I want to buy an upgrade. But out of actuality reasons I had a look at it — and was very much confused.

The scanning of the image and also each individual computer display doesn’t show the exact same colors as they are printed in the journal. But when I looked at the journal I couldn’t make a difference at all. Even when I looked really really close, my color blindness forbid me to distinguish the two different colored circles.

Don’t they have one person working at this magazine who is also colorblind? This can’t be true that they choose a shade of green and a shade of red which are so close together. I thought the term red-green color blindness made it’s way around…

I will write them a short notice and see what they think about it. Luky me, I already ordered the windows vista of my choice.

Terminology of Color Blindness

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If you scratch under the surface of color blindness you sooner or later will come across many different terms related to color blindness which are not really self-explanatory. To get a better understanding of the terminology of color blindness I try to lift the curtain at least a bit.

General terms
Color blindness – a term which is misleading – is also known as color vision deficiency or daltonism. Color vision deficiency is not very well known but describes the phenomenon more precisely. Daltonism is named after the first scientist who wrote about color blindness. More details about these terms can be read in my recent article about Color Blindness is not ‘Color Blindness’.

Types of color blindness
There are four different types of color blindness which can be distinguished. This relates to the fact, that humans have three different color receptors in the eye (red, green and blue sensitive cones) and each of them can either be absent or working not properly. The fourth type describes the real color blindness.

  • Protan: The first type of color blindness relates to the red cones. Protanopia describes the fact that these cones are missing at all whereas protanomaly describes a displacement of them. Better terms would be red-blind as a synonym for protanopic and red-weak as a synonym for protanomalous.
  • Deutan: This term describes all green cone related conditions. If the green cones are missing it is called deuteranopia and a displacement is called deuteranomaly. Again some better terms to describe theses deficiencies in common speech would be green-blind (deuteranopic) and green-weak (deuteranomalous).
  • Tritan: Blue cone deficiencies are either called tritanopia if the blue sensitive cones are absent or tritanomaly if they are displaced. According to red and green cone deficiencies tritanopic is also called blue-blind and tritanomalous blue-weak.
  • Achromatopsia: This is the real color blindness. An other term for achromatopsia is rod monochromacy, because the cones are almost completely missing and since cones see colors whereas rods only see lightness this relates to complete color blindness and even a strong sensitiveness to bright light.

The very well known term red-green color blindness is an umbrella term including protan and deutan vision deficiencies. More information can be found in my earlier articles about protanopia and tritanopia.

Types of color vision
Color vision can be different in animals than in humans. Some animals have more types of cone cells and some have less. Even humans can not only have less but also more than three color receptors (see the article about tetrachromats).

  • Tetrachromatism: Four different color receptors. This is very unusual in humans but can be found in some animals.
  • Trichromatism: Three different color receptors related to red, green and blue. This is what we call normal vision.
  • Anomalous trichromatism: Three different color receptors whereas one of them is more or less good working. This relates to protanomaly, deuteranomaly and tritanomaly.
  • Dichromatism: Two different color receptors which describes the three different types of color blindness protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia.
  • Monochromatism: Either no color receptors at all or only one type of color receptors. This is also called rod monochromacy or achromatopsia.

These most commonly used terms in color blindness are not really common speech and can hardly be remembered. I like the terms red-blind, red-weak, green-blind, green-weak, blue-blind and blue-weak definitely the most. But unfortunately they are not very well known.

At least the term red-green color blindness is very accurate, describes the most common form of color vision deficiency and is even very well known.