Re: OT: Supporting a color blind photographer
Re: OT: Supporting a color blind photographer
- Subject: Re: OT: Supporting a color blind photographer
- From: Chris Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 15:44:06 -0600
On Jul 22, 2011, at 12:34 AM, Peter Miles wrote:
> Hi there colorphiles
> Apologies if this is off topic, but here goes.
> I am a technician at a photography school. I am wanting to do more to support a photography student that is Red Green colorblind. Giving up on him is not an option I will consider. He is very determined to be a professional photographer. He has a great eye for composition and sense of lighting and bundles of get-up-and-go. But i see he will need a lot of support to work around managing color in his workflow. Especially as he leans toward portraiture.
> Has anyone worked with colorblind photographers / clients before?
>
>
> I have two main issues for me at the moment..
>
> 1- I am having difficulty getting across to him the problem i am seeing in his color of his finished files. Of course he cant see it. So managing the color in his workflow is currently lower on his priority list than I'd like. Any suggestions?
> As for his tutors, I'm showing them Photoshops color blindness soft-proof preset with a few images to give them an idea of the magnitude of the issues this student is facing. Maybe there are other resources out there too?
>
> 2 - Software / workflow tools he might be able to use to help manage color.
> thinking Xrites colorcheker passport for his portraiture.. similar or other ideas?
There are four types that could be called "red-green" color blindness. If he's a dichromat, the departure from normal vision is quite a bit different than if he's an anomalous trichromat. The most common kind of "red-green" color blindness is in the latter category, specifically deuteranomaly which is not one of the two types simulated in Photoshop.
So which type of color blindness does he have? I'd check his sense of cool vs warm neutral to see if there's a white point shift in his vision. The neutral neutral meanders for people with normal vision anyway so I don't know if that's the best test. Most photographers clearly want some warmth or some coolness to their black and white and long as his aren't either excessive or "odd" - i.e. green, purple and orange neutrals are usually avoided, for a reason. And if his white point is shifted then it's possible very light complexion skin will also be too cool or too warm (or too green or too magenta) so I'd look at that and just make him aware of it.
Color management is not actually going to improve things for him without 3rd party help. The reason is that color management hinges on the xyz color matching functions for people with normal color vision. So it helps to ensure metamerism does occur, i.e. two different spectral power distributions resulting in the same XYZ, tristimulus values. That's why real skin, with its unique spectral power distribution, will appear the same as skin on a (calibrated/profiled) display and print, both of which also have totally different spectral power distributions, yet a person with normal color vision will see these as a color match. Because of metamerism.
For him, conventional color management actually ensures metamerism failure. So he's just going to have to live with the discrepancies between what he sees in real life, and what he sees in print and on his display, until such time as someone makes for an easy substitute of the xyz color matching functions for color blind people. He will need to learn the subtlties of the differences between the real world, and his reproductions. If he tries to make real life and reproductions look the same to him, then there will be metameric mismatches for people with normal vision, i.e. most of us.
How significant these differences are, and how they manifest themselves depend on the type of color blindness he has. I see plenty of people with normal color vision go through weeks of miscues on what makes images look good or bad. So some of his departures from what makes for good looking prints may not be related to his color vision discrepancy, or color management.
Chris Murphy _______________________________________________
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