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Does anyone know off hand how we test whether or not tetrachromats are able to truly see more colours than your average person? Not just like the x-rite or what

Does anyone know off hand how we test whether or not tetrachromats are able to truly see more colours than your average person? Not just like the x-rite or whatever but maybe something that's more advanced than that which goes in the kind of direction that these more advanced colour space profiles seem to cover? I pass that test really easily but I really doubt I have more cones in my eyes or any of that.

michaelrpeskin 3y ago
My wife is a tetrachromat. She sees way more greens than I do. When we’re on a hike, she always gushes over all the “shimmery” greens and different shades of grasses and flowers. All I see is green. We were at an art museum once and there was a painting that was just a bunch of rectangles of different colors. She thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. So I got her a small print of it and she was disappointed. I’m sure the print was a CMYK printing of an RGB picture, so it got down sampled back to three channels. It looked the same to me as the original. God help us when we go pick out paint for a room in the house or try to color match a fabric. She has word visceral reactions to colors that just doesn’t make any sense to me.
- jamal-kumar 3y ago
  That's really interesting, thanks for that insight! I looked into it and it seems that some people are saying that the only positive way to test is to see if you're a tetrachromat is by DNA testing, while others are saying there's vision tests that can be done - Which did your wife take out of curiosity? [1] It kind of sounds like what you describe could be used as a vision test. [1] https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-really-test-if-I-am-tetrachromatic https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-really-test-if-I-am-tetrachr...
  - michaelrpeskin 3y ago
    She was at the eye doctor and just said something passing about colors and they did an ad hoc test there. She never did anything like a DNA test because it really wouldn't change her life any. It's just an interesting fact that she sees more colors. My theory that I've pieced together: The Y chromosome codes for 1 piece of the information and the X codes for 2. I'm sure it's not linear, but the quantum mechanic in me says that the color receptors are a linear combination of the three basis functions encoded on the DNA. For women their system is over determined, and I bet the green is really a degenerate solution that _usually_ overlaps. But in some cases the green is extra wide or even two district peaks. It also can explain why men are more likely to be color blind, if one of the 1 drops out, they only have two channels remaining. Women tend to have a back up.
    - jamal-kumar 3y ago
      Oh wow you're actually that famous physicist, what an honour! Been meaning to find a copy of your textbook. Any chance any of this has some influence on the idea of technicolor theories?
- Myndex 3y ago
  My guess here, to help it make sense, perhaps think in terms of the luminous excitation of "blacklight paint"... If she's having strong reactions, probably to metamers under the right lighting in a real-world environment and not constrained by the gamut of a defined colorspace like some flavor of CMYK or RGB... Here's a real question for her on the subject, how does she see a blacklight? I expect a true tetrachromat to see it nearly white. But also I wonder if she's sensing a fluorescing that is of sufficiently short wavelength that standard vision can not perceive it. The implants I have in each eye are different technologies. The right eye has no UV filter, the IOL in the left eye does have a UV filter. When I look at a blacklight with my right eye, it's bright, almost white in appearance. But looking at the blacklight with my left eye, it looks like what most see, as a very dark purple with almost no visible light. A friend of mine is an artist who has been experimenting with extreme metamerism, using pigments that radically change perceived color under different light sources, including of course, blacklight. Since you mention hiking, I wonder if some of the plant life you and your wife encounter have any florescent properties, or perhaps interact with some fungus that does... A portable UV light at night might be interesting...

michaelrpeskin 3y ago

My wife is a tetrachromat. She sees way more greens than I do. When we’re on a hike, she always gushes over all the “shimmery” greens and different shades of grasses and flowers. All I see is green. We were at an art museum once and there was a painting that was just a bunch of rectangles of different colors. She thought it was the most beautiful thing ever. So I got her a small print of it and she was disappointed. I’m sure the print was a CMYK printing of an RGB picture, so it got down sampled back to three channels. It looked the same to me as the original. God help us when we go pick out paint for a room in the house or try to color match a fabric. She has word visceral reactions to colors that just doesn’t make any sense to me.

jamal-kumar 3y ago
That's really interesting, thanks for that insight! I looked into it and it seems that some people are saying that the only positive way to test is to see if you're a tetrachromat is by DNA testing, while others are saying there's vision tests that can be done - Which did your wife take out of curiosity? [1] It kind of sounds like what you describe could be used as a vision test. [1] https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-really-test-if-I-am-tetrachromatic https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-really-test-if-I-am-tetrachr...
- michaelrpeskin 3y ago
  She was at the eye doctor and just said something passing about colors and they did an ad hoc test there. She never did anything like a DNA test because it really wouldn't change her life any. It's just an interesting fact that she sees more colors. My theory that I've pieced together: The Y chromosome codes for 1 piece of the information and the X codes for 2. I'm sure it's not linear, but the quantum mechanic in me says that the color receptors are a linear combination of the three basis functions encoded on the DNA. For women their system is over determined, and I bet the green is really a degenerate solution that _usually_ overlaps. But in some cases the green is extra wide or even two district peaks. It also can explain why men are more likely to be color blind, if one of the 1 drops out, they only have two channels remaining. Women tend to have a back up.
  - jamal-kumar 3y ago
    Oh wow you're actually that famous physicist, what an honour! Been meaning to find a copy of your textbook. Any chance any of this has some influence on the idea of technicolor theories?
Myndex 3y ago
My guess here, to help it make sense, perhaps think in terms of the luminous excitation of "blacklight paint"... If she's having strong reactions, probably to metamers under the right lighting in a real-world environment and not constrained by the gamut of a defined colorspace like some flavor of CMYK or RGB... Here's a real question for her on the subject, how does she see a blacklight? I expect a true tetrachromat to see it nearly white. But also I wonder if she's sensing a fluorescing that is of sufficiently short wavelength that standard vision can not perceive it. The implants I have in each eye are different technologies. The right eye has no UV filter, the IOL in the left eye does have a UV filter. When I look at a blacklight with my right eye, it's bright, almost white in appearance. But looking at the blacklight with my left eye, it looks like what most see, as a very dark purple with almost no visible light. A friend of mine is an artist who has been experimenting with extreme metamerism, using pigments that radically change perceived color under different light sources, including of course, blacklight. Since you mention hiking, I wonder if some of the plant life you and your wife encounter have any florescent properties, or perhaps interact with some fungus that does... A portable UV light at night might be interesting...