Do I have some form of colorblindness?

June 29, 2004 6:32 PM

So I have some kind of color viewing impediment, but it seems rather nonstandard. [mi]

It resembles red-green colorblindness - the only time I've taken the book test I've had in memory was just quickly, on request in LensCrafters, and that's what they said it looked like. I haven't remembered to ask the few times I've been to an actual ophthalmologist.

Well, first, with the green: I really think I can see green - I wouldn't describe the color of plants or Ask Mefi as a shade of anything, it looks like a color of its own, not like red. However, I'm not confident telling certain shades of light green from yellow, for example the buttons on this submission form. Green-yellow colorblindness? Green mixed in with other colors also occasionally throw me off, like a blue-green pillow can seem blue to me at first.

This all sounds like an inability to see green, but I really don't particularly see it as red, and besides that I do have a unique color I call green.

Also - and this is probably unrelated and may be normal for everyone - dark shades of bluish purple vs. blue, are hard but usually not impossible to tell.

posted by abcde to health & fitness (13 comments total)

Assuming you have a color monitor, how do you fare with an online test?
posted by majick at 7:01 PM on June 29, 2004

I'm "colorblind" on all, and on the last I can read the "26" but the 2 is a little rough. I think I've taken an online test before, and with similar results, but I didn't bother mentioning it because I know what the standard test says.
posted by abcde at 7:25 PM on June 29, 2004

(why even mention the possibility of having a grayscale monitor? ;) )
posted by abcde at 7:26 PM on June 29, 2004

Whoa. Plate 3 on that test is weird. I saw the 70 first, but then I saw the 29 once I looked. The 29 is still flippig in and out for me.
posted by scarabic at 7:44 PM on June 29, 2004

abcde, I've had similar things. For all of my life I tested completely normally on color vision tests, until about 3 years ago when I got my eyes checked while getting new contact lenses. Yet I can think of almost few instances where I have difficulty with color. I always put it down to just a bad copy of the test plates at that optometrist. I asked an opthamologist about it last summer, but didn't get re-tested, and he seemed to think it probably wasn't a problem. On that online test linked by majick, I score normal on some and red/green blind on others. It's weird.
posted by dnash at 7:45 PM on June 29, 2004

I have one instance where I have trouble with blue/green color, but I'm convinced it's just in my head: people's eyes.

I see fine variations in color with no problem, but with eyes, I seem to register people as either light-eyed or dark-eyed. Even for people I've known for years, I could describe the shape of their eyes, the puff of the lids, the length of lashes -- but blue vs. green? I'd usually not know.

I've tried to become more conscious of this since getting bawled out by a girlfriend, but it still requires a special effort. How weird is that?
posted by Tubes at 9:27 PM on June 29, 2004

Colorblindness is a huge category spanning many different types of problems. You are colorblind. This is what you have (most likely)

Toward the lower left on the Card and the Chart is a simulation of deuteranopia, a common variety of color blindness.
This is from the Greek for "second doesn't see" referring to the second cones in the retina of the eye that respond primarily to green light and are presumed to be defective in this condition.

This doesn't mean that greens are invisible to people with deuteranopia. Human vision is complicated.

The role of the green cones is less to detect green light than to distinguish it from red. Similarly, when the red cones "don't see" (protanopia), the main consequence is that reds, yellows and greens are indistinguishable.

http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/

Its genetic.

Also known as Daltonism.
posted by skallas at 10:37 PM on June 29, 2004

Tubes: Not very. A lot of people claim their eyes change color and such. It might be because the color is defined by a weird combination of refraction, translucency and pigmentation, because we process eyes differently than we do normal stimuli, etc. In any case, the volatility of eye color is normal, and I'm sure there are good attempts to explain it, but I haven't myself checked it out. (I probably should, it's sounding interesting now that I talk about it ;) )
posted by abcde at 10:38 PM on June 29, 2004

skallas: That still sounds like red-green colorblindness to me, and in life, I've never had any problem between red and green.
posted by abcde at 10:45 PM on June 29, 2004

Ack! Plate three I can't see anything much at all.

Still, I've come to the conclusion that I've got some kind of colour blind thing going on, because I'm doing really odd things playing popcap's Zuma I'm aiming balls with great accuracy, but matching the wrong colours up.

Arse.

So why didn't these get picked up on the tests we did at school?
posted by twine42 at 2:48 AM on June 30, 2004

Never heard my issue mentioned anywhere. When shades get inbetween green and blue, some of them can, at times, flash between "blue" and "green" to me. Not just a question of what to call it, but a matter of the tones shifting. Weird. Seldom any problem.
posted by Goofyy at 3:07 AM on June 30, 2004

On a slightly different note... I can see the full range of colors, but perceive noticable differences in hue/saturation between my left and right eye, especially in the reds & greens. Anybody else heard of/have this?
posted by bradhill at 10:10 AM on June 30, 2004

bradhill - I have noticed this too. One eye sees very slightly "warmer" tones than the other. I hadn't even thought about for a long time, though, since it doesn't cause me to upset girlfriends in any way.
posted by Tubes at 1:05 PM on June 30, 2004