Can’t you see that the roof is red?

No, I do not see that the roof of the church in Vik, Iceland is red. I am colorblind! Red/green is challenging. Typically, I get questions/comments – do you only see black and white? What color is my shirt? How do you drive with traffic lights? You should develop your photographs in black and white…

Being colorblind my whole life, mainly has been a talking topic over the years and has not been a problem for me. Although I have been known to purchase a purple shirt when I was sure that it is blue! By the way, I have a driving license and do know when the traffic lights are red or green.

Lately this has changed with the development of my photography hobby. Here it is important to see the different colors in the field and post processing depends heavily on your ability to distinguish between different shades. Landscape photography, with all the colors nature brings, only amplifies this.

I want to share some information on colorblindness and elaborate on some of the solutions I have found in my photography workflow to reflect all the tones nature deserves.

What Is Colorblindness

People often think when someone is colorblind it means they only see in black and white. As it turns out, color blindness is on a spectrum. There are different types of color blindness and only in extremely rare cases people are unable to see any color at all, but most colorblind people are unable to fully ‘see’ red, green or blue light.

Color blindness affects an estimated 8% (1 in every 12) of males and 0.5% (1 in every 200) of females worldwide. Overall, around 300 million people around the world have some form of color blindness. Populations with Northern European ancestry have the highest incidence.

The symptoms include trouble seeing colors and the brightness of colors in the usual way; and inability to tell the difference between shades of the same or similar colors. This happens most with red and green, or blue and yellow. Symptoms of color vision deficiency are often so mild that they’re hard to notice. That’s why many people with color vision deficiency don’t know they have it. In addition, people usually adjust to differences in how they see color.

The most common type of color vision deficiency makes it hard to tell the difference between red and green. People who are ‘red/green colorblind’ can easily confuse any colors which have some red or green as part of the whole color. So, someone with red/green color blindness is likely to confuse blue and purple because they can’t ‘see’ the red element of the color purple. Ultimately, the different types of red/green color blindness all result in the individual seeing a world most of you would describe as murky green with hints of blue and yellow. Browns, oranges and reds are easily confused, and pale shades, in general, are difficult to distinguish. 

Most people with color blindness are born with it. Color vision deficiency is usually inherited and passes from mother to son. There’s no cure, but special glasses and contact lenses can help some people see differences between colors. Color blindness usually affects both eyes equally and remains stable throughout life. Red/green and blue/yellow forms of color vision deficiency disrupt color perception but do not affect the sharpness of vision (visual acuity).

Most people who have color vision deficiency don’t have problems with everyday activities.

The foliage in New England is stunning!There are colors for everyone.

Diving In A Bit Deeper

In the retina, there are two types of cells that detect light. They are called rods and cones. Rods detect only light and dark and are very sensitive to low light levels. Cone cells detect color and are concentrated near the center of your vision.

There are three types of cones that see color: red, green and blue. The brain uses input from these cone cells to determine our color perception. Color blindness can happen when one or more of the color cone cells are absent, not working, or detect a different color than normal.

Although ‘red/green color blindness’ is a common term, there are different types and severities.

• Green-weak are individuals who have green cones and can usually see some shades of green, called Deuteranomaly. This is the most common type of color blindness by far affecting about 5% of males.

• Green-blind are individuals with no green cones, called Deuteranopia, affecting about 1% of males.

• Red-weak are individuals who have red cones and can usually see some shades of red, called Protanomaly, affecting about 1% of males.

• Red-blind are individuals with no red cones, called Protanopia, affecting about 1% of males.

As mentioned, red/green color blindness is much more common among men compared to women. This is because the genes (OPN1LW, OPN1MW, and OPN1SW) for the color vision cone light-sensitive proteins are on the X chromosome, of which males have one and females have two. So, if the one X in a male contains abnormal genes, the color blindness will reveal itself, while females can compensate with the other normal gene on the second X chromosome.

Individuals with impairment in the blue/yellow spectrum experience much more rare types of color blindness. By some estimates, this type of color blindness affects less than one out of every 10,000 people. It’s also interesting to note that blue/yellow color blindness is not tied to gender in the same way as red-green color blindness. Men and women are affected equally. 

Color blindness of the type that ‘sees’ only black, white and shades of gray affects 1 in 30,000 people while blue cone monochromacy affects 1 in 100,000 people.

Photography & Colorblindness

I love photography! I enjoy going outside and experiencing the colorful world. Like all landscape photographers, an important part of our hobby is to capture photos that we can share with others and present our own version of the beautiful and colorful world. Being colorblind does not alter this basic desire. It does mean that the process of creating each and every photograph involves an additional obstacle that those who are not in the elite group with color vision deficiency can easily skip.

Three or four years ago, when I started to focus on landscape photography, I found that being colorblind brings challenges to the workflow, both in the field (look at the pink in the sunset) and in the postprocessing with Photoshop and Lightroom being so fundamental in the process.

A short explanation for those who have not worked with this software – we photograph in RAW format which is sometimes referred to as a digital negative. You can think of a RAW file as the raw “ingredients” of a photo that will need to be processed in order to bring out the picture’s full potential.  The software help photographers to process the RAW images. However, when you use the various sliders to get tones, shades and colors that you like, but get results that do not work time and time again, it can be a real challenge.

I can hear some of you saying, why do you care? Process something that works best for you and be content. Different famous artists like Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh were colorblind and very successful. Sorry, but why should we be deprived of sharing our work with others? I am yet to meet a person who views photos in a gallery or on social media and stops and spends a moment or two actually appreciating a landscape photograph with the colors that do not work, like when the green grass is too saturated. Have a look at the image below which I thought was final. Are the colors pleasing for you? NO! I was told that it is too blue and it was sent back to the drawing board.

This is too blue! It does not look natural! Adjust the colors!

Back then, it took me over a year to overcome and embrace this challenge. With a lot of help from my close family, I battle with each photo to reflect all the tones nature deserves. At the end of the process, I am super happy when the colors work both for me and others.

Photography Toolbox

I want to share with you some of my ‘additional’ workflow related to colorblindness which hopefully you can consider using and continue to enjoy your photography.

In the Field

• Good practice for all photographers is to arrive at the scene early. This enables one to be prepared for sunrise or sunset ahead of the drama that usually develops in the landscape. I tend to take more photos than others as the scene develops (or I think so) and try not to miss any changes. This way I create a work around, the information in the camera together with the post processing software, replaces my color deficiency.

• Ask other photographers or others enjoying the view which colors they see and to point out any changes in the sky so you can capture them. A word of caution here, do not forget that many times there is a difference between what the eye sees and what the camera records.

• Document the scene with your cellphone. It is an excellent reference when you develop your images in post processing.

• Exposure bracketing is a tool we use to capture highly dynamic range scenes. You see this quite often at sunrise when the sky is bright and the ground is dark. Photographers take two shots, one for the sky (highlights) another for the ground (shadows) and we then combine the exposures in post processing. I use this technique sometimes even if it is not required. I find that the combined photo I produce in post processing is easier to edit as a lot of the heavy lifting was done by Photoshop.

Post Processing

• Calibrate your monitor. You want to ensure that no matter what is displayed it is accurate. This is good practice for all photographers.

• This is the most important tip – use the color mixer to find the colors you may not see. I move the saturation and luminance sliders of the various colors left and right looking where there is a change in color. I find that also looking at the histogram to identify any movement of the histogram also helps to identify if there is any trace of a certain color in the image. All this is to give you an idea where to focus in the next step.

• Now that I know where the action is, I can move the specific color sliders to reflect the required saturation or luminosity of the various colors. No different to anyone else. But… I find that nearly always I end up moving most sliders to the left which results in an unsaturated image. Interestingly, I understand that others of the elite group with color vision deficiency have the same tendency.

The sunrise exploded that morning in the Dolomites. Other photographers came away with more saturated images than my version

• Quality control – share the end result with someone who will give you meaningful input (not just say WOW to every image) and make changes till both of you are happy. I do this with my close family and get valuable critique for which I am very grateful.

Example

For the sake of completeness, I thought of illustrating with a relatively straightforward image I created a few weeks ago and share some of the processes described above that I implemented.

I took multiple photos before and after sunrise. When the sun popped out of the clouds, I also used the exposure bracketing tool. When one of my fellow photographers got excited about the different tones I quickly pressed my camera a few times. I also took a photo with my cellphone. I got positive vibes from different people when I sent them the photo from my cellphone and knew I had a ‘winner’.

When I got home, I focused on developing a photo from around the same time and also when the sun came out from behind the clouds. Note - many times the frame that includes the sun is the best, but not always. After playing with the color mixer on both frames, I understood that the drama was in the earlier frame. So, this is the one I persevered with.

The next stage was quality control. The feedback was that the color of the sky was good, but the colors and shades in the ground need more work. The second try got good marks on the ground, but the sky did not pass. The third try was a mix, included the sky like the first image and the ground like the second one, thumbs up. This is the final image you can see above.

Did I mention that it was relatively straightforward….

I will leave you with two quotes:

“Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” Paul Gauguin

“Color Vision Deficiency isn’t the end of the world. It’s just a different view of it.” Karen Rae Levine