Note the two color wheels at this link. On the protanopia wheel blue and yellow aren't much affected. Red is greyed out. Orange becomes yellow and purple, blue. But what's strange is what happens to green. Its essence is leeched out, so that it's barely identifiable as greenish.
Now if you see the two versions of one photograph above―the one depicting a redhead kid in a field―you'll notice that the grass is green in both. So apparently people with protanopia aren't entirely incapable of perceiving green. But it seems a complementary opposite does make something more noticeable.
2 comments:
Our friend Jeff who suffers from color blindness can't distinguish between red and green. Being very color conscious myself I used to show him projects or paintings I'd been working on to learn what colors he was able to see in them. Somehow, I used to think he was seeing shades that were invisible to me. It wasn't until later I learned that people with normal vision can see up to a million colors but those who are color blind can discern no more than ten thousand shades.
Have you read any of the neurologist Oliver Sachs' books? To say he was very interested in perception would be an understatement. The one I remember best is 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'. It has some fascinating, albeit often scary, stories about people who see things differently, some very very differently. You might want to check him out if you haven't already.
It's sad to know that having evolved in the jungle our species can see more shades of green than any other yet have that be the one color the colorblind can't discern.
I never knew that Jeff was colorblind, nor in that way. You're a strong draftsman (draftswoman? draftsperson?) in addition to being a painter, so your pictures have a lot to offer aside from color. It's not too surprising that you thought he saw shades you couldn't. When a person can see fewer colors and shades than those around them they might make more distinctions between those they can see.
I'm almost certain that I've read an Oliver Sacks book at some point. Which one it was I couldn't say for sure, because it was some time ago. Little and not so little quirks of neuropsychology are an interest of mine, so I might have read The Man Who Mistook..., but if so I may opt to read it again, to remind myself of what's there.
Yeah, red blindness and green blindness are not exactly the same thing. But the two colors, being complementary, do seem to be intertwined in a way. So if one is absent, the other suffers. Hence, red-green blindness. Interestingly enough both types of vision have roots in our jungle background. That's where we started picking out red fruit.
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