OT: Supporting a color blind photographer
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? Your help with suggestions, thoughts or experience with this would be appreciated. Apologies for being OT Kind Regards Peter Miles
Has anyone worked with colorblind photographers / clients before?
I sure have. Speaking the language of color with people means you'll eventually run into people with various and variable color deficiencies. I've been the unfortunate one to tell several people that they are colorblind after doing a quick test or two. I think you're doing all the right things. Showing his assistant's the colorblind soft proof capability and getting him color managed. Being color managed is no less important for him than anyone else. If he's got the eye for it he'll appreciate it. Train him on what he should look for. Make him a master of color. He'll come to know what to ask of his assistants that aren't color blind. Scott Martin Onsight Precise photographic color and workflow training http://www.on-sight.com
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
On Jul 23, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
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.
To further elaborate on this, and kinda correct myself also, the two Photoshop color blindness simulations: protanopia and deuteranopia are the most extreme varieties of "red-green" color blindness. So even though both combined are around 2% of all men, and aren't very common, they represent the greatest departure from normal vision (in the category of red-green color blindness), and thus simulating them ensures designers don't design something that a significant minority won't understand (like the word DANGER in red over a brown background). Someone with either protanomaly or deuteranomaly experience a potentially wide range between almost normal vision and the above types of color blindness. And combined this is around 7-8% of the male population, so it's much more common but also much more variable most likely. But not as bad as the previously mentioned types. So anyone with normal vision thinking that the photographer they're assisting actually sees images like the protanopia and deuteranopia soft proofs are probably mislead, unless the photographer is a dichromat. The intent of the soft proofs is to help designers make sure they design content that is understandable (or not dangerous) to most people. So by targeting worse case scenario, these two soft proof options do that. It's entirely possible (statistically likely) that he doesn't have such a significant color discrimination problem. I'd still encourage him to find out the type of color blindness he as, and the degree if it's an anomalous type of trichromacy. And do some experiments to find out if he's producing green or magenta cast prints (better magenta than green). I think it was in 2006, I went to a session at the Conference on World Affairs, "The Big O, the G-Spot, Homosexuality & Other Mysteries of Sexuality". Great session. The presenter was a heart surgeon, but I guess the subject of the session was (quite) a bit of a hobby of his. He figured that there may be a good reason for these kinds of color discrimination problems, because even though they're rare, they're statistically significant. He proposed that in a typical hunting party of a dozen or maybe a couple more, having 1 person on average improved the chances of the party successfully finding prey. Why? Because apparently the color blind guy has a certain "immunity" to the effects of animal camouflage in its natural environment. The camouflage must act as a kind of "noise" effect on people with normal vision that causes the animal to blend into the background, whereas this noise doesn't affect the color blind guy. And then this presenter proposed that premature balding in men occurs in about the same percentage, and that maybe it was Baldy's shiny head that reflected light whenever he moved that would cause a game animal to turn its head, kinda like "what was that?" and the first person in the party to see that movement would be the color blind guy, before the animal was spooked and took off running. Hunting party = 1. Animal = 0. Meanwhile, the color blind guy has 11 or so buddies that will tell him, "uhh yeah you don't want to eat that" since they can better discriminate between different kinds of plants, many of which can make a person sick or sometimes kill them. Chris Murphy
Hi Chris Thanks for your in-depth replies. I had not realised there was such a large range of red/green color blindness. Great that photoshop has some of them included as an aid to designers. Also thanks for the heads up on the likelihood of his screen to print mismatches. I'll check with some prints to get a feel of how big a difference he is seeing. For what it's worth I had shown this student the photodisc test image* on a profiled monitor screen. He said he couldn't see any difference in the image when the protanopia simulation was on. Interesting about the hunting. I heard that during the second world war colorblind 'spotters' were used in planes to see through the camouflage that would fool normally sighted people. And as for the balding theory! that put a smile on my face. Kind regards Peter Miles * (http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/downloadable_2/Test_Image_2.zip) On 25/07/2011, at 6:40 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Jul 23, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
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.
To further elaborate on this, and kinda correct myself also, the two Photoshop color blindness simulations: protanopia and deuteranopia are the most extreme varieties of "red-green" color blindness. So even though both combined are around 2% of all men, and aren't very common, they represent the greatest departure from normal vision (in the category of red-green color blindness), and thus simulating them ensures designers don't design something that a significant minority won't understand (like the word DANGER in red over a brown background).
Someone with either protanomaly or deuteranomaly experience a potentially wide range between almost normal vision and the above types of color blindness. And combined this is around 7-8% of the male population, so it's much more common but also much more variable most likely. But not as bad as the previously mentioned types.
So anyone with normal vision thinking that the photographer they're assisting actually sees images like the protanopia and deuteranopia soft proofs are probably mislead, unless the photographer is a dichromat. The intent of the soft proofs is to help designers make sure they design content that is understandable (or not dangerous) to most people. So by targeting worse case scenario, these two soft proof options do that.
It's entirely possible (statistically likely) that he doesn't have such a significant color discrimination problem. I'd still encourage him to find out the type of color blindness he as, and the degree if it's an anomalous type of trichromacy. And do some experiments to find out if he's producing green or magenta cast prints (better magenta than green).
I think it was in 2006, I went to a session at the Conference on World Affairs, "The Big O, the G-Spot, Homosexuality & Other Mysteries of Sexuality". Great session. The presenter was a heart surgeon, but I guess the subject of the session was (quite) a bit of a hobby of his. He figured that there may be a good reason for these kinds of color discrimination problems, because even though they're rare, they're statistically significant. He proposed that in a typical hunting party of a dozen or maybe a couple more, having 1 person on average improved the chances of the party successfully finding prey. Why? Because apparently the color blind guy has a certain "immunity" to the effects of animal camouflage in its natural environment. The camouflage must act as a kind of "noise" effect on people with normal vision that causes the animal to blend into the background, whereas this noise doesn't affect the color blind guy.
And then this presenter proposed that premature balding in men occurs in about the same percentage, and that maybe it was Baldy's shiny head that reflected light whenever he moved that would cause a game animal to turn its head, kinda like "what was that?" and the first person in the party to see that movement would be the color blind guy, before the animal was spooked and took off running.
Hunting party = 1. Animal = 0.
Meanwhile, the color blind guy has 11 or so buddies that will tell him, "uhh yeah you don't want to eat that" since they can better discriminate between different kinds of plants, many of which can make a person sick or sometimes kill them.
Chris Murphy _______________________________________________
OK so if it turns out he has protanopia then he's a dichromat, and it's not just color discrimination differences he has, but there is also a brightness loss component I believe, but I'm not sure how significant it is. Anyway, I think as long as you convey certain "no-no's" like green or blue people looking sick or dead, he should understand this. Maybe in some cases that's the look he's going for, but an overwhelming majority of the time it's not. Same for cartoonishly orange or red people, which looks unbelievable and silly, but not nauseating. There's some pretty clear science backing up that blue and green skin tones, across all ethnic types, is a big and abrupt loser. Probably for good reason, "ick that body might make me sick, let's get out of here," sort of early warning. Otherwise he's going to see things in a way others won't and it may be interesting. Obviously the world doesn't look wrong to him. I have a pretty good eye for color discrepancies, neutrals, contrast, and can do a pretty decent job getting display to print correlation. But 9 times out of 10 I can't photograph my way out of a hat so I think having that eye for photography is more valuable. Chris On Jul 25, 2011, at 3:00 AM, Peter Miles wrote:
Hi Chris Thanks for your in-depth replies. I had not realised there was such a large range of red/green color blindness. Great that photoshop has some of them included as an aid to designers. Also thanks for the heads up on the likelihood of his screen to print mismatches. I'll check with some prints to get a feel of how big a difference he is seeing. For what it's worth I had shown this student the photodisc test image* on a profiled monitor screen. He said he couldn't see any difference in the image when the protanopia simulation was on.
Interesting about the hunting. I heard that during the second world war colorblind 'spotters' were used in planes to see through the camouflage that would fool normally sighted people. And as for the balding theory! that put a smile on my face.
Kind regards Peter Miles
* (http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/downloadable_2/Test_Image_2.zip)
On 25/07/2011, at 6:40 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Jul 23, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
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.
To further elaborate on this, and kinda correct myself also, the two Photoshop color blindness simulations: protanopia and deuteranopia are the most extreme varieties of "red-green" color blindness. So even though both combined are around 2% of all men, and aren't very common, they represent the greatest departure from normal vision (in the category of red-green color blindness), and thus simulating them ensures designers don't design something that a significant minority won't understand (like the word DANGER in red over a brown background).
Someone with either protanomaly or deuteranomaly experience a potentially wide range between almost normal vision and the above types of color blindness. And combined this is around 7-8% of the male population, so it's much more common but also much more variable most likely. But not as bad as the previously mentioned types.
So anyone with normal vision thinking that the photographer they're assisting actually sees images like the protanopia and deuteranopia soft proofs are probably mislead, unless the photographer is a dichromat. The intent of the soft proofs is to help designers make sure they design content that is understandable (or not dangerous) to most people. So by targeting worse case scenario, these two soft proof options do that.
It's entirely possible (statistically likely) that he doesn't have such a significant color discrimination problem. I'd still encourage him to find out the type of color blindness he as, and the degree if it's an anomalous type of trichromacy. And do some experiments to find out if he's producing green or magenta cast prints (better magenta than green).
I think it was in 2006, I went to a session at the Conference on World Affairs, "The Big O, the G-Spot, Homosexuality & Other Mysteries of Sexuality". Great session. The presenter was a heart surgeon, but I guess the subject of the session was (quite) a bit of a hobby of his. He figured that there may be a good reason for these kinds of color discrimination problems, because even though they're rare, they're statistically significant. He proposed that in a typical hunting party of a dozen or maybe a couple more, having 1 person on average improved the chances of the party successfully finding prey. Why? Because apparently the color blind guy has a certain "immunity" to the effects of animal camouflage in its natural environment. The camouflage must act as a kind of "noise" effect on people with normal vision that causes the animal to blend into the background, whereas this noise doesn't affect the color blind guy.
And then this presenter proposed that premature balding in men occurs in about the same percentage, and that maybe it was Baldy's shiny head that reflected light whenever he moved that would cause a game animal to turn its head, kinda like "what was that?" and the first person in the party to see that movement would be the color blind guy, before the animal was spooked and took off running.
Hunting party = 1. Animal = 0.
Meanwhile, the color blind guy has 11 or so buddies that will tell him, "uhh yeah you don't want to eat that" since they can better discriminate between different kinds of plants, many of which can make a person sick or sometimes kill them.
Chris Murphy _______________________________________________
A photographer friend of mine is also color blind. I found a book with all sorts of colorful images with accompanying descriptions and large patches of the colors used in the pictures. He scanned the patches and could read off the RGB numbers and use that to help determine what colors he was dealing with in his own images. Can't remember the name of the book unfortunately. It wasn't highly accurate, but got him in the right ball park. Now I believe there are sites on the internet that give preferred RGB numbers for skin tones etc. Have to use the Margulis approach and go by the numbers. Andy PS. I'm always surprised at how many people in the art creation business are color blind. You'd think those two things would be mutually exclusive. -----Original Message----- On Behalf Of Chris Murphy ....................... Anyway, I think as long as you convey certain "no-no's" like green or blue people looking sick or dead, he should understand this. ............................ Chris
On Jul 26, 2011, at 9:27 PM, Niemann, Andy RBCM:EX wrote:
PS. I'm always surprised at how many people in the art creation business are color blind. You'd think those two things would be mutually exclusive.
Yeah the most common type, deuteranomaly, is a continuum - not one single state of departure from normal vision, and are still considered trichromats. But I'm unsure where on this continuum most people affected are. It is an area being researched as it relates to the applicability of the standard observer also, the idea that there is just one when there very well may be several applicable standard observers. I seem to recall some years ago that the Crayola Crayon guy who, I think, came up with new colors, was color blind. I'm pretty sure he's since retired. The numbers for full on dichromacy are pretty small - not insignificant, but still it's more common for people (men mostly) to be on that continuum between just below what's considered normal trichromacy, and yet above dichromacy. Who knows, maybe there's some correlation between design work and hunting for animals that isn't as much about color discrimination, but some sort of pattern recognition or enhancement ability (or interest). Maybe both are sourced in a basic cognitive demand for problem solving that just so happens to come along for the ride with color blindness, or vice versa. Chris
Good point. ...Reminds me of the book I'm just reading - Dawkins "The Greatest Show on Earth" where he mentions a Russian scientist taming wild foxes over several generations. Evidently the gene that determines tameness also determines various other body features. So for instance the tame foxes had droopy ears instead of the usual stiff upright ears and particular color patches and other features that would seem to have nothing to do with tameness (they didn't look like foxes anymore, but more like classic lapdogs). They have a name for this effect which I can't remember now, but it is evidently a common occurrence for a gene to affect more than one function. Maybe something similar is happening here - the gene that gives you color blindness also gives you a heightened desire to work with visual things, or vice versa?. Andy -----Original Message----- From: Chris Murphy [mailto:lists@colorremedies.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 8:38 PM To: Niemann, Andy RBCM:EX Cc: Peter Miles; colorsync-users@lists.apple.com Subject: Re: OT: Supporting a color blind photographer On Jul 26, 2011, at 9:27 PM, Niemann, Andy RBCM:EX wrote:
PS. I'm always surprised at how many people in the art creation business are color blind. You'd think those two things would be mutually exclusive.
.............. . Maybe both are sourced in a basic cognitive demand for problem solving that just so happens to come along for the ride with color blindness, or vice versa. Chris
participants (4)
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Chris Murphy
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Niemann, Andy RBCM:EX
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Peter Miles
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Scott Martin