I recently saw an example of red-green blindness and I cannot wrap my head around how they’re able to see both yellow and blue vividly. If they can see yellow and blue individually, why can they not see green?
I did a bit of searching and learned how the red, green, and blue cones in your eyes work, so I was temporarily satisfied that it was the same as TVs and monitors that don’t actually produce the colour yellow but only give the illusion… Until I remembered that the illusion is achieved by combining red and green light, so wtf.
Help my brain. Make it simple.
In: Biology
It is indeed not as simple. While the TV monitor is able to produce three distinct wavelengths of light the cones in our retina is not as selective and will dectect light in a wide spectrum of wavelengths at different sensitivities. Worst is the blue cone which in most people will be able to pick up even orange wavelengths although much weaker then blue light. Our brain perecives the color of light by looking at the ratio of signals from our cones and also our rods. This does mean that a standard monitor is not able to display all the possible colors we can see but it can give a good representation of most of them.
The problem with red/green color blindness is that without the red cones there will be some hues of red and green that excites the remaining cones exactly the same. It is not the same as just switching off the red lights of your monitor.
Latest Answers