Test Your Color Sense

"This is a collection of 9 interactive color games. Or rather, exercises disguised as games. These exercises aim at providing some fun while at the same time helping you to learn how to classify colors."

I got all of these right the first time through, but then, I'm good at this sort of thing. I really don't know whether people are more likely to find this trivial or difficult, but it's a good test and kinda fun!

________________

Mike  (Thanks to David Emerick)

Comments

[Mike O'Donoghue]

Three exercises — quite cute. Cleverly done.

[Vassili]

First one with the circle (and lemon) does not understand that mirror image is same sequence, just in the opposite order (blue on upper half, yellow-greens on the lower half).

[Anonymous]

That last one took me a while :-)

[Bas Scheffers]

And to distinguish yourself from people like me, you should order this t-shirt!

http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?productid=559

[Jeff Henderson]

Wow very cool! The last two were pretty challenging. They are also a good test to verify that your monitor is properly calibrated ;-)

[erlik]

The first column is trivial, second a tiny bit more difficult, but the last two triangles are not easy. Both took a while for me, too.

[Martin]

"I really don't know whether people are more likely to find this trivial or difficult" - trivial!

[Dion van Huyssteen]

Quite easy. Apparently when everyone tells me I can't see colours properly, they lied. ;)

[Jonathan S Land]

Indeed, the last one took a few tries. Hard to say if it's trivial, but obviously it's not a win/lose game. Having done it on a 5-year-old laptop, though, it does attest to my screen's calibration.

[Deacon]

I must be a color guy. (actualy I already knew that) when I first saw a color wheel being used in a classroom (not mine) I remember thinking... some people need this to be explained? but I have similar shortcomings in other fields. its the whole mountain vs the squirrel argument I guess.

[Peter Robinson]

All correct and accounted for, first time also. I have (I've been told) perfect pitch. I know you're into music and audio. How's your hearing? Do you think there's a connection? Maybe people who can tell a note is a semi-quaver out can also see in perfect pitch, so to speak. Only just thought of this and it's probably nonsense.

[einars o]

i was doing perfect until i reached the purple where i got a few wrong in the very saturated end of the triangle. i think i am better with some colors than others.

does anyone have some links to those color blotch tests where you are supposed to see numbers or letters? i have actually never been good at those and i have been told that i am color weak, heh.

[Seth]

"Maybe people who can tell a note is a semi-quaver out can also see in perfect pitch"

A semi-quaver is a measure of time, not pitch. A note would be out of tune by a semi-tone, the smallest unit of a tempered diatonic scale, or a number of cents, hundredths of a semi-tone. Anyone with trained ears can tell when something is even a tiny bit out of tune compared to a reference pitch. That's called relative pitch. A person with perfect pitch can tell you what note you're hearing without reference to anything.

To me one of the fascinating differences between color and sound is that with color you see the sum total of the mixed light. That's how the eye works with the brain. With sound you can hear the sum total of the sound as well as the individual components at the same time. You can distinguish among a flute, a violin, a trumpet and a bell all playing the same pitch at the same time. Or you can hear a chord on one instrument and its constituent notes at the same time.

[Jan Luursema]

Funny, practice makes perfect I guess..

The first ones were easy, then I made some mistakes (I mixed up the 2 black ones a couple of times..) but the last one (9) was a breeze.

[Max Hertelendy]

I got them right the first time too, and I must agree that some color variations were harder than others. For me, the purple/violet variations were the less obvious.
I can imagine the little child with the color version of the perfect pitch:
Mother: "Son, what's the color of that apple?"
Son "it's R238 G18 B15, Mom"

[Peter Robinson]

"A semi-quaver is a measure of time, not pitch"

I only said I've been told I had perfect pitch, I didn't say I new anything about music. And I clearly don't.

[Robert Walters]

I got them all right the first time too, and rather quickly at that.

I don't have perfect pitch, but I've been told that I'm very bright, utterly charming, and a fantastic photographer.

Ahhhh.........now I feel good.

[cyeager]

I liked the Jimmy Olsen-Superman game better... repost the link for that!

[Ctein]

Dear Max,

Sorry, but that poor child only has perfect relative color pitch.

A child with true perfect color pitch would say "L59, a75, b72".

{grin}

I found the tests a lot of fun. Got them all on the first try, but the last one took some real thought.

FWIW, my experience has been that most people are more strongly sensitive to some color differences than others (which may explain why some of us found #9 more relatively difficult than others). For example, I have a lot of trouble in the yellow-green/blue-magenta directions. When I'm color-balancing a print, I can't readily tell the difference between very slight yellow and green casts (conversely, a slight magenta vs slight blue). I can perceive extremely small color errors-- as small as 1 CC -- but I need to use print viewing filters to tell me in which of those two hue-directions the color is off.

pax / Ctein

[Mike]

I should mention that I had trouble with the *second* to last one. The last one took me a while, but I was more confident about it (I'm sensitive to color-casts in grays I think!)

Mike

[Rob Reiter]

Perfect score first try, on 5 year old PowerBook G4. I was ready to use that screen as an excuse if I missed any. Now I want to see it on my Cinema Display at work. I guess 8 hours a day of Photoshop didn't hurt.

[Andreas]

Thanx for sharing. these games are fun and nicely done as well.

[Max Hertelendy]

I think there's one thing that gives it away: You can overlap the spots while moving them, which practically eliminates the guesswork. If you don't consider that cheating, it makes a world of difference in the tough calls.

[Max Hertelendy]

Ctein, I see even with my crude attempt of a joke I can learn new things here!!
There was a remaining issue from the Big Prints post that I suddenly realize I'd be glad to get some new ideas on. I've settled for medium format film scanning for the print quality I like the most, but I'm not really sure about why I'm shooting fine grained slides (Velvia) now, since I've been doing it for long now. Probably it's because I love how they look on a light table, but suddenly I'm not sure that it's the best choice for scanning. Is there any resource on the net about film scanning, and any possible advantages of neg vs slides, low saturation vs high saturation, contrast, grain, etc? I'd like to reevaluate the whole film choice thing. If anyone can share any tips, I'd be thankful to hear about them.

[justin]

One mistake. Dang! And I would have got 100% if I hadn't changed my mind.