Jacket advice for colorblind person

[Silmakhor]

Imagine my surprise when I learned I was seeing the Leaping Salmon colors "wrong."

I am specifically "protanomalous." That means I don't have enough red receptors. Red doesn't "pop" for me and it tends to fade out into blends, which is why it gets confused with green.

I was under the impression that Leaping Salmon was in fact blue and green rather than blue and muted red/brown. So I went and pulled every image I could find of the tartan and put them into the Paint program on my laptop. And used the color picker tool to isolate the hues so the computer could tell me what was what. Mind blown. I think this happened because many similar tartans (basically anything derived from Black Watch) have a green background with central blue squares. So subconsciously, I made the assumption that Leaping Salmon was similar. Knowing what the computer tells me, I actually do start to perceive the "redness." Even in color perception, which intuitively feels completely objective, the power of suggestion can be intense.

This is the tartan version of the "Is the dress blue or white?" from a few years ago. Colorblind people go through their entire lives like this.

I'm still going to get this tartan, but will just be a little more careful in assembling outfits!

[Silmakhor]

You will do what you will do, but if I may respectfully suggest that buying more tartan than you have already will only make your colour choice problems worse. Many of us in Scotland, who can clearly see colours, stick with just one tartan and might possibly have a brace of kilts, one say in modern colours and one say, in ancient colours. We then find the colours of jackets, hose, ties etc., that we think march, ------I repeat, march------ happily together and that is that. For someone in your position I would have thought that that might be helpful. Besides , its less expensive that way!

Hrrrmm.

I do appreciate the advice!

I also want to clear up some misconceptions that some folks may have. Colorblindness is usually quite subtle, and is not at all what people imagine when they first hear the phrase. I am *protanomalous,* which means that I have fewer "red" receptors than most people. I can *still* see red just fine IF it is a primary red and not mixed with blue or green in a blend. So the Lion in the royal standard is quite clearly red to me. It's not a "bright" color though in the way in might be to others. Conversely greens are often brighter. Again, primary greens are easy to see.

The real trick is with pastel and blended and secondary/tertiary colors. Pink often looks gray (because red is faint for me) and lime green is essentially the same for me as yellow. Purples usually look more bluish for me. If I have a real need to know what other people see, I sometimes pull a photograph into a graphics application and get the computer to give me a numerical breakdown of the colors.

Why am I going into this? To clear up any notion that colorblind people don't appreciate tartans in different colors. I see a broad range of shades that make various tartans attractive and interesting in their own right. Otherwise I'd stick to something completely gray

[Father Bill]

Hrrrmm.

I do appreciate the advice!

I also want to clear up some misconceptions that some folks may have. Colorblindness is usually quite subtle, and is not at all what people imagine when they first hear the phrase. I am *protanomalous,* which means that I have fewer "red" receptors than most people. I can *still* see red just fine IF it is a primary red and not mixed with blue or green in a blend. So the Lion in the royal standard is quite clearly red to me. It's not a "bright" color though in the way in might be to others. Conversely greens are often brighter. Again, primary greens are easy to see.

The real trick is with pastel and blended and secondary/tertiary colors. Pink often looks gray (because red is faint for me) and lime green is essentially the same for me as yellow. Purples usually look more bluish for me. If I have a real need to know what other people see, I sometimes pull a photograph into a graphics application and get the computer to give me a numerical breakdown of the colors.

Why am I going into this? To clear up any notion that colorblind people don't appreciate tartans in different colors. I see a broad range of shades that make various tartans attractive and interesting in their own right. Otherwise I'd stick to something completely gray

I think then, that the more useful and descriptive term would be "colour deficient" rather than "colour blind". It is a useful description often used in the fields of visual measurement, education, and medicine. It generally runs on one of two axes - red/green and blue/yellow. Male red/green deficiency is the most common form of colour restriction, followed at some distance, by total male colour blindness.

In my own case (red/green deficient) I find that it is far less confusing to explain myself that way. To enlarge on my experience, older traffic lights in my province are red, yellow, and white to me and I often confuse some shades of blue and purple because the red in the purple is not always obvious to me.

[Silmakhor]

I think then, that the more useful and descriptive term would be "colour deficient" rather than "colour blind". It is a useful description often used in the fields of visual measurement, education, and medicine. It generally runs on one of two axes - red/green and blue/yellow. Male red/green deficiency is the most common form of colour restriction, followed at some distance, by total male colour blindness.

In my own case (red/green deficient) I find that it is far less confusing to explain myself that way. To enlarge on my experience, older traffic lights in my province are red, yellow, and white to me and I often confuse some shades of blue and purple because the red in the purple is not always obvious to me.

Yes, that is a better phrase. Oddly, I have never heard it much even from my eye doctors.

[Jock Scot]

Hrrrmm.

I do appreciate the advice!

I also want to clear up some misconceptions that some folks may have. Colorblindness is usually quite subtle, and is not at all what people imagine when they first hear the phrase. I am *protanomalous,* which means that I have fewer "red" receptors than most people. I can *still* see red just fine IF it is a primary red and not mixed with blue or green in a blend. So the Lion in the royal standard is quite clearly red to me. It's not a "bright" color though in the way in might be to others. Conversely greens are often brighter. Again, primary greens are easy to see.

The real trick is with pastel and blended and secondary/tertiary colors. Pink often looks gray (because red is faint for me) and lime green is essentially the same for me as yellow. Purples usually look more bluish for me. If I have a real need to know what other people see, I sometimes pull a photograph into a graphics application and get the computer to give me a numerical breakdown of the colors.

Why am I going into this? To clear up any notion that colorblind people don't appreciate tartans in different colors. I see a broad range of shades that make various tartans attractive and interesting in their own right. Otherwise I'd stick to something completely gray

Thank you for the education, it is very much appreciated. In a fairly long life, I have never come across someone with colour-blindness who actually has to deal with it and to discuss it with others. I wonder if there are different degrees of the affliction? I suspect there are? I notice that some members here see colours very differently to how I do. Yes there are different colour names for similar colours, but sometimes one person's brown, for example, is described by someone else as a completely different colour. I accept computer screens can scramble colours and individual interpretations of what is seen is also understandable but sometimes, I do wonder if my eyes, or theirs, need testing!

[Silmakhor]

Thank you for the education, it is very much appreciated. In a fairly long life, I have never come across someone with colour-blindness who actually has to deal with it. I wonder if there are different degrees of the affliction? I suspect there are? I notice that some members here see colours very differently to how I do. Yes there are different colour names for similar colours, but sometimes ones person's brown is described by someone else as a completely different colour. I accept computer screens can scramble colours and individual interpretations of what is seen is also understandable but sometimes, I do wonder if my eyes, or theirs, need testing!

You're most welcome!

And yes, it varies quite a lot between individuals. My brother, for instance, is also colorblind but has a different condition - he has plenty of red receptors and few for green.

Curiously, I find that different samples of the _exact same fabric_ look different depending on the hosting website. The images on USA kilts, for instance, look very very different from the images on the various Mills' sites.

Speaking of "having to deal with it," I went into teaching because my condition was starting to become a real barrier when I wanted to do graphic design.

[OC Richard]

Imagine my surprise when I learned I was seeing the Leaping Salmon colors "wrong."

I am specifically "protanomalous." That means I don't have enough red receptors. Red doesn't "pop" for me and it tends to fade out into blends, which is why it gets confused with green.

I was under the impression that Leaping Salmon was in fact blue and green rather than blue and muted red/brown. So I went and pulled every image I could find of the tartan and put them into the Paint program on my laptop. And used the color picker tool to isolate the hues so the computer could tell me what was what.

That's cool that they have a program like that! Though putting colours into words is never very satisfactory, and I've noticed over the years that people in the UK and people in the USA often "draw the lines" between colours in different places. (Colour is a continuous blended spectrum, words are not, so each culture snips different places along the spectrum to fit with each word.)

I've not seen Leaping Salmon in person, I only have this image, and have it as it appears on my laptop now.

But I would call the colours like this: upon a rich deep blue field, a pair of Salmon stripes, bordered by Olive Drab stripes.
The blue field contains a muted yellow line, and the Olive Drab stripes each contain a lavender line.

"Salmon" is a specific colour, or more accurately a range of colours (like all "colours" are).

This is the tartan version of the "Is the dress blue or white?" from a few years ago.

In my opinion that silliness had nothing to do with colour perception. Rather, it was a matter of the inevitable thing that happens when you ask an ambiguous question: you get two different answers, both equally correct.

In art there's a term "local colour" meaning the surface colour of an object under neutral light, meaning natural outdoors light. This is to be kept differentiated from the colour of that same object under other lighting conditions.

For example, say at a wedding reception the DJ has brought in lights with blue film over them, casting everything in blue light. A photo is taken of the Bride, Groom, and several other people.

In the photo everything has a blue cast: everyone's faces, the shirts of the men, the dresses of the women including the Bride's dress.

"What colour is the Bride's dress?"

That question is ambiguous, giving us too little to go on, and can't be answered.

To anyone who knows lighting, art, photography, etc the question needs to be more specific:

1) "What is the local colour of the surface of the Bride's dress itself?" (That is, what colour would the dress appear under natural outdoor lighting?)

We humans are very good at, without consciously doing it, mentally balancing/adjusting/correcting all the colours in a photo, so in old orange-cast photos we know that people didn't all have orange skin and didn't all wear orange clothes and that the sky wasn't orange in broad daylight. In like manner we glance at this blue-cast wedding photo and unconsciously adjust the colours because we know that all the people didn't have blue skin and thus weren't all wearing blue clothes. The answer to this question is "white".

2) "What is the local colour of the surface of the photo itself in the region of the Bride's dress?" For that we can hold up colour-swatches (Pantone etc) against that bit of the surface of the photo to avoid doing those unconscious colour-corrections we naturally do. The answer to this question is "blue".

It's just like where I work: they came out with a new job application, and it has a question

"Have you, or have you not, ______________ ?" Yes/No

Every applicant asks me "what is THAT supposed to mean? I tell them to leave it blank.

I'm still going to get this tartan, but will just be a little more careful in assembling outfits!

Actually I don't think you need to terribly careful, because it's the very nature of the tweeds we've been discussing to be complex and subtle, thus harmonising with pretty much anything.

[Silmakhor]

Yeah, I wasn’t trying to say that the blue dress/white dress confusion was the result of the same *biological* process that leads to color perception difficulty - rather, that the queasy feelings of ambiguity generated by the dress question is a constant fact of life for a colorblind person

Also, thanks for your color labeling description of the Leaping Salmon tartan - much appreciated.

[PiperPadre]

You mentioned Black Watch Weathered and I do happen to have photos of a Weathered tartan compared with those same three tweeds.

The tartan is also from Marton Mills, Hunting Stewart Weathered, in tweed.

The jacket tweeds are

left: Marton Mills CHE 120 Dunlin Coffee
centre: Lochcarron S430 Gamekeepers Shetland Jacketing
right: Marton Mills CGE 147 Plover

I've developed an almost automatic nervous reaction to Richard's posting of samples. I think I've figured out the dynamics 1.To wonder at the beauty of those cloths;
2. Look at my budget;
3. Try to convince myself that I need it.