Is this color-blindness?

[G A I A]

Hey folks!

I practised colors and stuff a few hours ago and made a very unpleasent discovery. While the book said a grey rectangle on a bigger yellow rectangle should look slightly violet/magenta it just didn't. To me it still looks grey.
I tried out other contrasts, same result, it always looks just plain and simple like the color I've choosen while other people said "yeah looks like this and that..."

Am I just not looking in the correct way or am I color-blind? I can differ between green and red, being not able to do so is color blindness, at least that's what I was told...
I always have big trouble finding the right colors when I draw and despite practising I didn't make much progress so I really started to wonder...

Can glasses be a cause for things like that? I need to wear them when I work, draw or read something :/

[Flake]

grey rectangle on a bigger yellow rectangle should look slightly violet/magenta
The key word here is "slightly" as in "A tiny bit shifting towards".

Is this color-blindness?
I'm going to guess no. I'm slightly colourblind and I can see shifts like the one you're talking about, I also wear glasses. Really though, the shifts are subtle and it's possible your eyes aren't tuned in to such small shifts yet.

Also, you're female so you're 20 times less likely to be colourblind than any average guy.

The only person who can tell you if you're colourblind is a trained pro, meanwhile these should give you a good idea.
http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.asp
http://colorvisiontesting.com/online%20test.htm

Edit: if you fail these, it might be simply duff monitor settings btw..

[rattsang]

no your not color blind, everyone sees this way. its an optical phenomenon call simultaneous contrast and is the basis for harmonious color arrangement, say avoiding the use of blue in a predominately yellow/orange family painting and using grey as an optical blue. it isnt always obvious if you know what the color really is, your brain will fight it, try looking away and back again

[G A I A]

I took those tests and passed as "normal"... thank god. And thank you for posting this :)

So how can you learn to see these colorshifts? I asked a few people who never had anything to do with art, they could see it, I still can't... I remember practising with the same book a few years ago, I could see the stuff at the time, so why isn't it working now? :oneye:

[Flake]

Rattsang, she's saying that she can't see it..

Edit: Gaia, try the book under different lighting conditions. (neon bulb, standard bulb, daylight) see if that makes any difference.

Like I said though, it's usually subtle.

[Lamp]

We're really talking more about temperature than anything else. All hues have a relative temperature -- orange is warmest, blue is very coldest, and the colors in between have a range of medium temperatures. That much is easy for anyone to understand. But think about what happens when you start to desaturate colors -- that is, take the "color" out of them, so that they start to look more like grey than a color. It's still going to have some color in it -- and thus, some temperature of its own. If the gray is totally desaturated (pure neutral gray), it is neither warm nor cool -- it's right in the middle. However, it can still appear warm or cool, because "warm" and "cool" are only relative terms. Color X appears warm if it is surrounded by cooler colors. If Color X were surrounded entirely by colors warmer than itself, it would start to appear cooler -- indeed, it WOULD be the coolest color in the palette.

I whipped this up in photoshop.

http://imgur.com/ZF6SZ.jpg

The two gray lines are exactly the same color, pure neutral gray, meaning there is no color at all in them. But when you surround them with extreme temperature colors, they start to shift in appearance. The gray surrounded by orange appears cooler, and the gray surrounded by blue appears warmer. The shift is in the RELATIONSHIP between the two colors, not in the individual colors themselves. If your eye isn't honed to detect temperature, you might not be able to pick up on it totally, but you SHOULD be able to see that the gray looks different than each other, despite being exactly the same.

[Flake]

Gaia, quick question, what general colour is the dress in this painting?

First impression, no Photoshop etc.

768816

[G A I A]

@lamp: thank you for the explanation, this really worked, especially on the orange one! :)
The blue one was a bit difficult to look at, same problem as before, at first I couldn't see much of a difference... after staring at it for 5 minutes or so magic happened! :bounce:
I still wonder why it didn't work with my yellow-grey stuff, I stared at it for more than just 5 minutes :/

@flake: without giving it a second thought I'd say is a slightly greyish blue-green

[Flake]

Gaia, try it with the RGB sliders and eyedropper in Photoshop, it's mostly neutral or even warm greys.
It looks cool / green / blue because everything else is so much warmer.

This is good, means you can see this particular phenomena.

[G A I A]

Wow I was surprised :)
Well, just figured that I have problems with those things if it inculdes a pure yellow and/or blue. Seems like my brain has some problems with those colors :/