Good monday, my friends. I’ve spent a smashing three days in the country among beautiful tamed beasts who jump jumps and win ribbons of every color. Though those of the primary variety are far more valued.
The film won’t be ready for a few days (I lugged along a Pentax 67 with a 165mm lens and now can’t move my left arm), so i thought we’d amuse ourselves with a little color acuity test. You know, just to stay sharp.
Color’s an important thing to be good at. Sucks to see an image ruined by too much magenta, ya know?
Ok, here’s the way it works. Go to this site. You’ll see a palette like this:
Now for each line, create a smooth progression of color. Here is mine below, for reference:
The lower your final score is, the better. My uncle, who is a graphic designer, got a 4. But he had two tries. I was pretty happy with 7.
What’s your score?
Two fun facts:
1. My first job in New York was at Conde Nast, in the Quality Control Department. Seven color experts looked at every magazine as it went to press to make sure the color was on. Because, you know, if a wedding dress in an ad looks eggshell and not ecru, there are going to be problems.
2. I’m selling my 20D. Barely used. It will make a nice addition to any camera arrangement. Let me know if you’re interested.
ps. here is the color test link again. don’t be a wuss, try it.
Rachel, you make me a lucky, lucky girl on photoblog quiz day. I rocked the design challenge last time, and I just got a 3 on the Hue Test! (My problems were in the green-blue spectrum too). Maybe I need to switch careers and go to work for Pantone?
That colour IQ test was fun! My score was “3″
. Thanks for the lunchtime exercise!
BTW, i really enjoy reading your blog. It’s like having someone else do the imagery web searching for you
Thanks,
Ben.
Four… a little mental exercise to start my morning. Keep up the nice work!
This seems to be floating around quite a few places just now. I did it and scored 4 – many people I’ve seen have only a few mistakes and for those, they seem to cluster in around that greeny/blue boundary region.
This picture brought a lump to my throat. 15 years ago that was my daughter’s bedroom. Fishing line around all four walls strung with ribbons. I see a Third from Old Salem Farm. Pony Finals was held there in 1992. We brought home ribbons. Children grow, ponies stay small, medium and large forever.
I got a zero, much to my surprise! I’m rethinking my entire career trajectory…
My score was zero but I think it’s a lot about your monitor.
I only got a 176 on my iPhone.
I got a 28. Apparently I have low hue discrimination… for every hue.
Scored a 10. A little off in all the ranges..
I got a zero! That really made my day, thanks for the test. Now I just need to find somebody willing to pay me to use my mad color skills!
I got a zero (“You have perfect color vision!”) and it made my day too! If only I could take nice photos …!
Zero! No wonder everyone complains abut how nit-picky I am.
I’m a graphic designer and I got a 4 also !
However, being a perfectionist, it was slightly disappointing…
Someone else had linked to this test but I totally was being too much of a wuss to take it. What if I found out that I’m terrible? Thanks for the extra push— scored a 3! Not too shabby.
I loved this test…I just scored a 5. Felt good…thanks.
I have “perfect color vision” apparently. That was heaps of fun, but yeah, it might have more to do with the quality of my monitor than of my eyes.
I’m completely heartbroken to have scored a 6, I hope that I can blame my lousy monitor.
I got a 4 on my first try. I’ll have to rub our designers’ noses in that.
I think that test has more to do with monitor calibration and quality than actual colour perception. I scored a perfect zero, but then I keep my display calibrated, have a good viewing environment, etc.
I contrast this to what I see out there in the world, on the desks of art departments and photo editors, uncalibrated monitors, laptop screens, imacs, etc, all of which perform poorly even when calibrated. Add to that that most graphic designers and photo editors know very little about color management and it gives me the shivers, these are the people that are evaluating my work and who knows what it looks like? The newest shiny apple laptop screens are so contrasty as to be unusable.
This is when you miss film.
….From hero to zero….
i guess those years slaving as a printer in a darkened pit have paid off. Now how can I use this as a photographer?
Answers on a postcard please…
i scored a perfect 0 on my calibrated 21″ samsung PC at home… and a 4 uncalibrated G5 mac with Dell 24″ at work.
monitors make a huggggeeee difference!
mmm perfect as well, lovely surprise! i did it on a macbookpro lappy, wonder if that makes a difference?
Great game .. i got a 7
But even better is that I have half of the staff of our newspaper doing the test!
Ohh and turns out 2 of my photo editors are color blind… they got 115 and 99.
Hmmm…the monitor being calibrated to show correct color is beside the point for this test. It’s a test of relative shifting hues. The test does not involve comparing colors between screens or to pantone color swatches…then you would need a well-calibrated monitor. An expensive monitor will help (not going to get into that more), but it’s fine tuned calibration isn’t so important…
I think I’m colorblind…
Reminds me of one of David Hume’s 200-year-old examples about the problem of induction; in his thinking, the only thing that we can make up that is truly unique (not like a unicorn which is a combination of a horse and a rhinoceros or something like that) is a color missing from a spectrum. In his example, a person is presented with a spectrum of all the colors that one would call blue, although one shade is missing from the spectrum. It’s possible, he surmises, to intuit what that shade is, and it’s not a combination of the two shades on either side of the missing hue; rather, it’s unique and made up. But that’s the only such example he (and others) have been able to come up with. There’s my philosophy degree….
I’m late to the party, but can’t help bragging about my zero! I still think having a quality monitor and good environmental lighting helps. Even posture made a difference – I sat up straighter to compare a final few tiles before submitting my score. Whee – thanks for the ego boost, Rach!
A 12!
Not bad after a long day at work…
Never feel so good to get zero at a test!
I always though that my eyes were not that good.
But I have a good screen which for sure help.