The Colorblindness Simulation Image Filter Is Kind of Depressing

I don't see this as a big problem - you can't miss what you've never had. Do you walk around all day craving heroin and thinking about how dull and lifeless life is without it? No, I don't think you do - considering you've never tried it. But a heroin addict feels that way and his/her life would probably feel empty without it - while in the same situation someone who'd never tried heroin would be perfectly content.

Well said; great analogy.

Actually, you can imagine what you're missing.. I'm a graphic design student with red/green colorblindness and I always tend to make my colors way too vibrant for people with normal vision. When I see these pictures and read the descriptions it's depressing that I can't see truly vibrant colors all the time and now realize that everything I'm seeing looks grey and dead 🙁

This ... makes me sad. I'm sorry. Someday, science will fix it. Hopefully, in our lifetime!

hm i dont see colours in infrared or ultraviolet. that does not make me feel sad

If 11 out of 12 men and 199 out of 200 women in the world did, and talked about how beautiful they were, the military had studied the influence they have on happiness and psychology, Walt Disney had entire theme shows revolving around them at their parks, work software utilized them to display information (e.g., train traffic control programs or stock market data), and even video games used them to convey information so that you couldn't play a significant percentage of the games released each year, or you found yourself unable to match basic clothing because you couldn't figure out which pieces were complementary, it's safe to say you would realize the extent of your loss.

Therefore, your example isn't analogous.

Too bad! I'm one of those lucky color-normal people who can spot the tiniest bit too much or too little a block away! I have been going on various color-vision Websites (especially Colblindor; kudos, Daniel Flueck!) for the last 3 weeks or so; seeing things the way you do (or at least so-so simulations of it) really opens my mind up! I sure hope your professors are (or were) helping you out with your over-vibrant, lay-on-the-color problem. Perhaps somebody could teach you to work with just the colors you CAN see?
Best of luck in any event!

I got addicted to hitting myself on the head with a hammer and my life feels so empty without it.

Funny you bring up gene therapy for colorblind people. My girlfriend is colorblind, really enjoys art, and somewhat feels like she's missing out due to her condition. Out of general curiosity I did a little research. Some folks at the University of Washington have successfully induced full spectrum vision in naturally red/green colorblind monkeys through gene therapy. Essentially they took a virus, modified it to carry particular genes for red/green vision, and injected it into the eyes of the monkeys. Some of the cones within their eyes changed into the type of cone needed for red/green sight. It took a while for their brains to account for the new sensory input, but full spectrum vision was verified through simple picture tests. The monkeys seemed to suffer no side effects to boot (I think this was done in 2009).

HOW COOL IS THAT!? Thanks for sharing; I'll have to read more about it!

My husband is color-blind and I'm very color-oriented; I frequently refer to see him as "disabled" as it does seem very sad to me all the things he can't see.  One interesting thing though, people with this type of color-blindness are actually better at seeing through camouflage (which is probably why it exists/is so prevalent).

That is an excellent point.  I imagine it is an evolutionary adaptation.

Nice idea about the "evolutionary adaptation"! That may be why more men than women are colorblind, too: so more cavemen could see prey or predators hiding in the greenery. Bright "reds," "oranges," "blues," and "purples" can be suc a distraction sometimes, especially in the wild where you must be on the ball.

My understanding is that it's due to the existence of the sex chromosomes.. To simplify it down - colour blindness is a recessive mutation on the X chromosome, men only get one X chromosome so if they have the rare defective gene they are automatically colourblind - but women have two X chromosomes so they need two copies of very rare genes to be colour blind.

Actually, for males, it's not that rare. The best authorities think that as many as one in every twelve males is at least partially colorblind -- and as many as one in fifty is severely colorblind; for women, the rate is one in 200 for partial colorblindness and less than one in 500 for more complete colorblindness (depending on who you consult). The two more common forms are protanopia (blindness to red light) and deuteranopia (blindness to green light). Both of these cause the much-noted red-green color confusions among frustrated schoolboys and art students. The really rare forms are tritanopia (blindness to blue light) and monochromacy; These aren't linked to X-chromosomes and are even-Steven between the sexes. Actually, one source has it that tritanopia is an overwhelmingly female affliction -- but still as rare as the golden egret, which is why it's not high on the women's health agenda.

Don't make it out to be rare. If one in every fifty little boys is colorblind, that's a lot of innocent little kids who can't get their color identifications or terms "right." Parents and educators would do their charges a power of good by bearing this in mind!

Thanks for the clarification Jennifer. I didn't realize it was that common and will definitely be keeping it in mind. Like all things genetic it seems much more complicated than commonly thought. Although I can do without the chasisement. Somehow I think the little colourblind boys of the world will survive my offhand comment on a personal website.

The weird and interesting thing to me are that the three forms of colourblindness you mentioned are named after the three hydrogen isotopes, protium, deuterium and tritium. I haven't seen that convention used anywhere else. I wonder why that is...

Sorry to be so snippy; I just feel a little sorry for these people when I see those simulations.

As for the names we use for the syndromes, they're from the Greek language. They mean "first one doesn't see" (protanopia), "second one doesn't see" (deuteranopia), and "third one doesn't see" (tritanopia). Those prefixes: "pro-", "deuter-" and "tri-" always mean the same things: first, second, and third. The isotopes you mentioned are named the same way because scientists have found THREE, not two, or four, or eleven, of them. Too many more of them and the naming artists would have had to search the Roman or Nordic pantheon or the roster of famous scientific achievers.

Or maybe the Saturday morning cartoons of the '70's.

Eventually there likely will be a treatment for colorblindness and other so-called deficiencies.  Mentioning stem cells strikes near to my own heart, and career.

Stem cells, embryonic, induced and otherwise have a lot of potential.  At this point it is in fact potential and not pragmatic reality.  Keep in mind we do not have FDA approved therapies using stem cells, with the exception of some recently approved cord blood applications.  There is a LOT of testing going on and most of the legitimate news of treatments we read about is in that vein.

At the risk of sounding elitist, there are other things we have to address ahead of colorblindness:  diabetes, ALS, spinal cord injuries, and of course degenerative diseases of the eye to name only a few of the debilitating conditions on which we're attempting to sic stem cells.

It's a slow process.  We've been able to culture stem cells for nearly 15 years but we're still a long way from your doc sending you to the pharmacy or clinic to take care of that pesky diabetes issue.  I say this even though we now generate material that can regulate glucose in animal models --there are lots of things to do before the FDA will give a stamp of approval for both safety and efficacy.

I'm not saying this to be gloomy, quite the opposite.  I am laying out that this is a complex series of challenges, and that we're working on it, hard.

I do take issue with Crabhooves analogy. I'll substitute my own:  You can miss what you don't have.  Children born without the physical capacity to ever walk can certainly lead lives of great joy and satisfaction.  However, I suspect that given the opportunity, at least some people in that condition would take legs and to learn to walk if only to experience what others talk about.  I fully believe that we should try and give them that opportunity because we have a potential means to do so.

TL;DR  Yay stem cells, boo dengenerative disease and functional deficiencies.  Yay science and medical research.

Best TL;DR ever.  I vote for "yah" and "boo" systems in the future.

I also agree. I am an artist, and my boyfriend is colorblind. I love color and feel as if it really does affect mood and atmosphere of a room. It makes me upset to know that he cannot experience the beauty of color. Hopefully gene therapy will be available to us soon, and the colorblind will be able to me cured.

I know this is an old post now: you posted it before St. Patrick's Day of 2012, and now it's Thanksgiving of 2013, but I've been looking at these simulations on the Web for a few weeks, and I think these different types of color vision are fascinating, more than anything else.
I have to say, one thing about each of the three types of colorblindness (apart from total monochromacy, whereby the patient lives in a grayscale world like an old movie) is that it's a blindness to a part of the light spectrum which the rest of us can see. Tritanopic patients can't see blue light; they effectively live on the Planet Purple. Protanopic patients can't see red light; deuteranopic patients can't see green light. This effectively dulls and dims their world; each type misses a third of the light the rest of us get to enjoy. So, for us with the good fortune of typical color vision, their color spectrums and world views are dull and depressing. We're just not used to them. Colorblind people are. I imagine successful gene therapy will leave some of these people overwhelmed and reeling for a while; it will be to them as 1969 at the Haight-Ashbury was to a few of us.
Children grow up playing with the hands they're dealt.

I wonder if there is any connection between color blindness and depression. This might be the biased remark of a non-color blind person, but I would be utterly depressed not being able to see all the beautiful colors in the green and red spectrum.

Like I said, they're used to it; our spectrum would seem hallucinatory.

I wonder if anyone here has seen this. It's a video of a young man who, through the use of specially-designed glasses, sees the color purple for the first time.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/abagg/the-moment-a-colorblind-guy-sees-purple-for-the-first-time?bffbvid&utm_term=4ldqpj5#.fsDVnPP9Q3

I checked the website for EnChroma to see how they worked, and looked at Amazon.com reviews, which are mixed. However, the company does state clearly that they can't help everyone, so that might be what one would expect.

The video, if genuine, is touching and fascinating to watch.

Don't worry. I'm colorblind. We still see very vibrant colors. We just see them differently than you do. Granted I guess I could have a less severe case but think of it more as it can be harder to distinguish between colors at times rather than seeing less colors or not seeing them at all. The colors on the left are still very vibrant and more so than the right. There's an older post I see that states we don't see a certain color of RGB at all and that's not the case. We have less color cones for whatever type of colorblindness (in my case red/green. I lean more green so I have a bit more for red), not zero cones for that color. So we just see a bit less of whichever spectrum which can make it harder to distinguish between colors that use that spectrum. Also I believe that since I have more blue/red cones that I see more vibrant versions of blue and purple/red than the normal person. Blues, purples, and reds are always very vibrant for me while greens are less desirable. But I can still see green and can definitely tell when neon green is staring me in the face. I can even imagine what green probably looks like to someone without colorblindness because of how blue looks to me (cranking the saturation on my monitor also helps lmao). For me nothing beats looking at a sunset. The bright blue sky turning to a deep blue and giving way to a deep red and bright orange as you reach the sun is breathtaking. If you guys see a different sunset than me then there is no reason to try and fix me. I'm chill with keeping my eyes the way they are.