I’m partially color-blind. I’m not sure precisely how, but my current guess is that it’s a red-green hue discrimination deficiency commonly called Deuteranomaly. It affects 5%-6% of all men.

I was interested to see how I would do on this color test, which involves sorting four randomly-mixed bands of color into smooth gradients. Given a person’s mistakes, a histogram can be drawn, showing where along the spectrum one’s ability to discriminate between colors is weakest. Here are two of my results:

Clearly, I’m bad at distinguishing hues in the red-green range, but I was surprised to find that I’m absolutely terrible at distinguishing hues in the blue-red range, as well. My score actually puts me behind 99% of the population. I imagine that an expert could look at these histograms and pinpoint the specific color deficiency that I have; something to keep in mind in case I ever find one.

Despite this deficiency, every so often there are colors and contrasts I see that pry my brain open. The artist Yves Klein developed a special shade of ultramarine blue (actually, both a pigment and a special medium) in the late 1940’s called International Klein Blue. One of his paintings (“Blue Monochrome”) uses IKB, and it remains one of my favorites to this day:

Blue Monochrome

…
Something about the color just floods my retina. It’s vivid in a way that nothing else seems to be. Perhaps this is how people with normal color vision (I have slight red-green colorblindness) see everything?

Uploaded by Nargopolis on 5 Oct 07, 8.04AM PDT.

I have a macro photo of this painting that I use as a desktop background. It’s amazing to look at, even though monitors aren’t actually capable of reproducing the IKB faithfully.

So, I was excited to read today that IKB is actually available to the consumer. Samples are available for non-exorbitant amounts; I’m going to have get myself a small bottle.

NOTE: This color deficiency may have its benefits, as well. This 2005 study in University of Cambridge and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne lent some evidence that men with deuteranomaly have ranges of the spectrum where their hue discrimination is superior to that of normal (i.e. lesser) humans:

Simmons hypothesizes that because deuteranomaly is quite common in human populations, the gene responsible may have once provided an evolutionary benefit. For example, it may have helped them spot potential food items in complicated environments such as grass or foliage, he suggests.

This also gives some explanation for many anecdotal reports that partially color-”deficient” soldiers are much more able to see past camouflage than their normally-sighted squad mates.