Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Color IQ

One of my fellow work shop / photo op participants from last year, Marc Gaudet, posted a link to a site for testing your Color IQ, basically testing your acuity with distinguishing colors as they change hue from one to another. The test is rather simple, yet extremely effective.

Marc scored a 4, with zero being perfect and scores above that being worse and worse …

I scored 54 … no doubt a product of my color deficiency … and the kicker is that the four bands looked pretty smooth to me. But obviously that’s the point … color deficiency is a problem that does not manifest itself until it is tested.

ColorIQ[1]

Go try it out … it’s fun and very informative.

Update: On my fairly new Dell U2311H eIPS panel, I scored 39, and my errors were clustered a bit tighter. Definitely an obvious pair of areas where my hue discrimination is atrocious.

image

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just took the Online ColorIQ challenge and eked out a 28. I have poor yellow vision (usually can't make out yellow text on white backgrounds) and I used a small, non-calibrated laptop screen so I guess that's good for a C grade. Did I win an X-Rite puck? :)

Kim Letkeman said...

I wouldn't mind one of those new xrite color thingies that is supposed to give you perfect color ... the Nikon guys have been on about that ... but it's not cheap ... still, my results say that something like that will be needed :-)

Unknown said...

I got an 8. Maybe related to making maps all day at work?

Adrian said...

Very interesting test. I got a 4 with the four bars showing just right of centre.

My monitor is not hardware calibrated but I've done my best to calibrate using the usual tests.

My wife usually tells me I'm bad at detecting colour differences so I think I'll get her to do this test.

Giorgio said...

I scored a 7. Your score was mid range so not that bad. 99 is the measure for low color acuity

Kim Letkeman said...

HabsFan: Probably related to having good eyes :-) ... I too am a rabid habs fan, but life has been difficult for us for many years now ...

Unknown said...

Well, I got a 4.

Based on your information, below is how your score compares to those of others with similar demographic information.
Your score: 4
Gender: Male
Age range: 40-49
Best score for your gender and age range: 0
Highest score for your gender and age range: 1520
0 ( Perfect Color Acuity )
99 ( Low Color Acuity )

Kim Letkeman said...

Another terrific score :-)

bluenoser said...

Hi Kim. I did this test last year and got a 4 - did it yesterday and got an 8. My monitor is definitely not calibrated so I guess it's still a decent score.

You noted your colour deficiency in your blog. Were you aware of the extent of this problem before this test?

Kim Letkeman said...

James, yes I was. But note that my brother scored a 74 and 99 is considered bad color vision ... so although I am definitely hampered, I am not entirely defeated by it ...

tygrus said...

I scored 20 on a HP LP1965 at work. May be some reflections but it looked like the blue-red region. I wish it showed mean & median scores with Standard deviation. IT support for GP stats research.

Kim Letkeman said...

20 is a good score ... my nephew scored 18 at my parent's house and then went home and scored 0 ... so monitors and environment make a big difference ...