12 ms·

I suspect it tests your monitor and monitor calibration as much as your color perception. In particular, sRGB displays have a pretty severely limited green gamu

I suspect it tests your monitor and monitor calibration as much as your color perception. In particular, sRGB displays have a pretty severely limited green gamut. If you have a wide-gamut display, the test is probably gonna appear different. But another problem is with displaying the colors essentially full-window, which is going to be nearly-full-screen for many users. When we're staring at a screen with a particular tint, our eyes quickly do "auto white balance" that skews the results. It's the mechanism behind a bunch of optical illusions. To address that last problem, I think the color display area should be much smaller, or you should be shown all hues at once and asked to position a cut-off point.

chimeracoder 2y ago
> To address that last problem, I think the color display area should be much smaller, or you should be shown all hues at once and asked to position a cut-off point. If you're doing this on a phone, try holding your phone at arm's length and against a white background (such as the wall or ceiling) and doing the test that way. Assuming you have redshift/night mode disabled, I suspect you'll end up closer to the median.
myworkinisgood 2y ago
I was initially running the test with redshift enabled and was getting 95% towards blue. After reading this comment, went and disabled the redshift and got a consistent 50% median.
sandworm101 2y ago
These sorts of tests also need to be done in controlled background lighting. Whether people are doing this in a dark room, in a sunny kitchen, or under green led lighting would be a greater factor than anything being tested.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  I don't think that's necessary for an informal test. Human color perception is extremely good at compensating for that and modern screens are relatively uniform and uniform besides. Cultural differences like the person downthread saying they consider anything with the slightest hint of green to be "green" seem far more impactful.
- TuringNYC 2y ago
  >> These sorts of tests also need to be done in controlled background lighting. Whether people are doing this in a dark room, in a sunny kitchen, or under green led lighting would be a greater factor than anything being tested. Whether its a dark room or sunny kitchen, i'm not sure whether Turquoise is ever going to be blue or green. The entire question seems more like wordplay.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
krick 2y ago
I mean, it really just tests arbitrary word usage. I have no fucking clue if turquoise is supposed to be "green" or "blue", it's turquoise!
- ibash 2y ago
  Nah turquoise is green.
  - MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
    Apparently I thought so as well. Then again, my display is in night mode...
    - ibash 2y ago
      Oh shit. Turned off night mode and switched sides!
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    No turquoise is blue.
    - chronogamous 2y ago
      Within the ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation Turqoise (#40E0D0) is classified as a brilliant bluish green. Turquoise blue (#00FFEF) is close to turquoise on the color wheel, but slightly more blue. More metrics, including sRGB, can be found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise_(color) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise_(color)
- langcss 2y ago
  A bit like "is this hotdog overpriced" amd trying to binary search the exact cent where it became overpriced.
  - Bluecobra 2y ago
    That’s easy, any hot dog that is more than $1.50 USD is overpriced.
pminimax 2y ago
Author here, yes, it tests a mix of your monitor calibration and colour naming. The two types of inferences you can make with this are: 1. If two people take the test with the same device, in the same lighting (e.g. in the same room), their relative thresholds should be fairly stable. 2. If you average over large populations, you can estimate population thresholds, marginalizing over monitor calibrations. The most interesting thing for me is that while cyan (#00ffff) is nominally halfway between blue and green, most people's thresholds, averaged over monitor calibrations, imply that cyan is classified as blue. I was not expecting that the median threshold (hue 174) would be so deep into the greens.
- jacobolus 2y ago
  By the way, "cyan" is a very poor name to use for #00ffff. The term "cyan" refers to the kind of slightly greenish blue used in 4-color printing (CMYK), and was just a Greek word for "blue" chosen to be a jargon word to avoid confusion with the English color name. It has a totally different color than the equal mixture of typical G and B primaries in a computer display. Similarly, "magenta" is a poor name to use for #ff00ff. The term "magenta" is a jargon word for the slightly purplish printer's red, which was chosen to avoid confusion with the English word "red". It has a completely different than the equal mix of RGB R and B primaries. ("Red", "green", and "blue" are also very poor names for the RGB primaries, which are substantially orangish red, yellowish green, and purplish blue.)
- ljf 2y ago
  It is interesting to test people at just one device. I used my phone on a mount, and completed the test with my wife, children and myself - I was interested (though not surprised) what an outlier I was, as I am colour blind in various combinations, but though my wife scored 'bang in the middle' - it was interesting that wasn't common. My kids were both to the left of the scale fwiw - I was further right than 98% of people.
- wmil 2y ago
  I think you're paying more attention to the mathematics than the social usage. The ocean at a tropical beach is often actually cyan but never referred to as green.
resonious 2y ago
Very good point. I just realized I did this with my monitor on low-blue-light-mode.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  I only realized after seeing your comment. As usual, when I turned it off to compare, the hue it shifted to looked super unnatural and I had to re-enable it. I always forget how much white-balancing my vision does.
Inviz 2y ago
If sRGB has severly limited green, what would you say about CMYK?
- lifthrasiir 2y ago
  CMYK is generally even more limited in the colorness to the end of gamut.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
This is pretty much the same way that a calibrator works (if you have ever watched a color calibrator running, you know what I mean), but a calibrator doesn't get biased, like the human eye. In order for it to be a true "neutral" test, each test would need to be preceded by a "palate-cleanser" gray screen, or something, and there would probably need to be a neutral border. > you should be shown all hues at once and asked to position a cut-off point. This is actually the way I have seen this stuff tested, before.
lloeki 2y ago
Ambient light will also affect the result. Not necessarily because the ambient light would affect the screen shows (it's emissive, not reflective) but because the brain also does "auto white/colour balance". For a fun experiment, get your hand on some heavily yellow-tinted party glasses, go outside on a clear day with a bright blue sky. When you put them on everything will be stark yellow tinged (and the blue sky will be completely off, like green or pink, can't recall which) but after a little while going on your business, perception adjusts and only a much less dramatic yellowish veil is in effect. You'd look at the sky and see almost-blue. The kicker is when you remove the glasses: the sky will suddenly be of a glorious pink! (or green, can't recall) Only moments later it'll adjust back to be blue. A certain wavelength may be absolute blue of a certain kind, but the perceptual system is all relative: "wait, I know this sky should be blue because that's what I've always seen, so let's compensate". The same kind of effect - although less dramatic - can be achieved with lights that can be adjusted from say 2400K to 6500K and having as reference an object that is known "pure white", like a A4/letter sheet of paper. This effect, in turn, adjusts how "absolutely displayed" colours are identified by way of biasing the whole perceptive system. AIUI that's the rationale behind Apple's True Tone thingy, aiming to compensate for that. So the result of this test should be somewhat different depending on ambient lighting temperature.
- dotancohen 2y ago
  > Ambient light will also affect the result. Also deliberate software blue light filters. Mine is always on, both on the desktop and on the phone. Many people may forget that they are even using one.
  - i_am_a_peasant 2y ago
    Also my glasses filter blue light.
    - cubefox 2y ago
      Fancy way of saying they have a yellow tint (:
collyw 2y ago
I was looking it and thinking that's turquoise. Is it closer to blue or green? Meh, it's close to the middle.
jdhzzz 2y ago
I did it on IPS laptop display and got 175. On my OLED phone I got 179. I am more in agreement with the phone results, but the turquoise on the phone looked even greener to me.
trebligdivad 2y ago
I tried it twice, once on each of my two different monitors (a Dell S2817Q and Dell S2409W) made a few years apart and with completely different settings; and I got 175 on one and 174 on the other. So pretty close even given the difference.
adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
alternatively putting the color in a white box should provide enough context
Izkata 2y ago
> I suspect it tests your monitor and monitor calibration as much as your color perception. In particular, sRGB displays have a pretty severely limited green gamut. If you have a wide-gamut display, the test is probably gonna appear different. Also browser choice: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40401125 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40401125
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

chimeracoder 2y ago

> To address that last problem, I think the color display area should be much smaller, or you should be shown all hues at once and asked to position a cut-off point. If you're doing this on a phone, try holding your phone at arm's length and against a white background (such as the wall or ceiling) and doing the test that way. Assuming you have redshift/night mode disabled, I suspect you'll end up closer to the median.

myworkinisgood 2y ago

I was initially running the test with redshift enabled and was getting 95% towards blue. After reading this comment, went and disabled the redshift and got a consistent 50% median.

sandworm101 2y ago

These sorts of tests also need to be done in controlled background lighting. Whether people are doing this in a dark room, in a sunny kitchen, or under green led lighting would be a greater factor than anything being tested.

AlotOfReading 2y ago
I don't think that's necessary for an informal test. Human color perception is extremely good at compensating for that and modern screens are relatively uniform and uniform besides. Cultural differences like the person downthread saying they consider anything with the slightest hint of green to be "green" seem far more impactful.
TuringNYC 2y ago
>> These sorts of tests also need to be done in controlled background lighting. Whether people are doing this in a dark room, in a sunny kitchen, or under green led lighting would be a greater factor than anything being tested. Whether its a dark room or sunny kitchen, i'm not sure whether Turquoise is ever going to be blue or green. The entire question seems more like wordplay.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

krick 2y ago

I mean, it really just tests arbitrary word usage. I have no fucking clue if turquoise is supposed to be "green" or "blue", it's turquoise!

ibash 2y ago
Nah turquoise is green.
- MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
  Apparently I thought so as well. Then again, my display is in night mode...
  - ibash 2y ago
    Oh shit. Turned off night mode and switched sides!
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  No turquoise is blue.
  - chronogamous 2y ago
    Within the ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation Turqoise (#40E0D0) is classified as a brilliant bluish green. Turquoise blue (#00FFEF) is close to turquoise on the color wheel, but slightly more blue. More metrics, including sRGB, can be found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise_(color) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise_(color)
langcss 2y ago
A bit like "is this hotdog overpriced" amd trying to binary search the exact cent where it became overpriced.
- Bluecobra 2y ago
  That’s easy, any hot dog that is more than $1.50 USD is overpriced.

pminimax 2y ago

Author here, yes, it tests a mix of your monitor calibration and colour naming. The two types of inferences you can make with this are: 1. If two people take the test with the same device, in the same lighting (e.g. in the same room), their relative thresholds should be fairly stable. 2. If you average over large populations, you can estimate population thresholds, marginalizing over monitor calibrations. The most interesting thing for me is that while cyan (#00ffff) is nominally halfway between blue and green, most people's thresholds, averaged over monitor calibrations, imply that cyan is classified as blue. I was not expecting that the median threshold (hue 174) would be so deep into the greens.

jacobolus 2y ago
By the way, "cyan" is a very poor name to use for #00ffff. The term "cyan" refers to the kind of slightly greenish blue used in 4-color printing (CMYK), and was just a Greek word for "blue" chosen to be a jargon word to avoid confusion with the English color name. It has a totally different color than the equal mixture of typical G and B primaries in a computer display. Similarly, "magenta" is a poor name to use for #ff00ff. The term "magenta" is a jargon word for the slightly purplish printer's red, which was chosen to avoid confusion with the English word "red". It has a completely different than the equal mix of RGB R and B primaries. ("Red", "green", and "blue" are also very poor names for the RGB primaries, which are substantially orangish red, yellowish green, and purplish blue.)
ljf 2y ago
It is interesting to test people at just one device. I used my phone on a mount, and completed the test with my wife, children and myself - I was interested (though not surprised) what an outlier I was, as I am colour blind in various combinations, but though my wife scored 'bang in the middle' - it was interesting that wasn't common. My kids were both to the left of the scale fwiw - I was further right than 98% of people.
wmil 2y ago
I think you're paying more attention to the mathematics than the social usage. The ocean at a tropical beach is often actually cyan but never referred to as green.

resonious 2y ago

Very good point. I just realized I did this with my monitor on low-blue-light-mode.

extraduder_ire 2y ago
I only realized after seeing your comment. As usual, when I turned it off to compare, the hue it shifted to looked super unnatural and I had to re-enable it. I always forget how much white-balancing my vision does.

Inviz 2y ago

If sRGB has severly limited green, what would you say about CMYK?

lifthrasiir 2y ago
CMYK is generally even more limited in the colorness to the end of gamut.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

This is pretty much the same way that a calibrator works (if you have ever watched a color calibrator running, you know what I mean), but a calibrator doesn't get biased, like the human eye. In order for it to be a true "neutral" test, each test would need to be preceded by a "palate-cleanser" gray screen, or something, and there would probably need to be a neutral border. > you should be shown all hues at once and asked to position a cut-off point. This is actually the way I have seen this stuff tested, before.

lloeki 2y ago

Ambient light will also affect the result. Not necessarily because the ambient light would affect the screen shows (it's emissive, not reflective) but because the brain also does "auto white/colour balance". For a fun experiment, get your hand on some heavily yellow-tinted party glasses, go outside on a clear day with a bright blue sky. When you put them on everything will be stark yellow tinged (and the blue sky will be completely off, like green or pink, can't recall which) but after a little while going on your business, perception adjusts and only a much less dramatic yellowish veil is in effect. You'd look at the sky and see almost-blue. The kicker is when you remove the glasses: the sky will suddenly be of a glorious pink! (or green, can't recall) Only moments later it'll adjust back to be blue. A certain wavelength may be absolute blue of a certain kind, but the perceptual system is all relative: "wait, I know this sky should be blue because that's what I've always seen, so let's compensate". The same kind of effect - although less dramatic - can be achieved with lights that can be adjusted from say 2400K to 6500K and having as reference an object that is known "pure white", like a A4/letter sheet of paper. This effect, in turn, adjusts how "absolutely displayed" colours are identified by way of biasing the whole perceptive system. AIUI that's the rationale behind Apple's True Tone thingy, aiming to compensate for that. So the result of this test should be somewhat different depending on ambient lighting temperature.

dotancohen 2y ago
> Ambient light will also affect the result. Also deliberate software blue light filters. Mine is always on, both on the desktop and on the phone. Many people may forget that they are even using one.
- i_am_a_peasant 2y ago
  Also my glasses filter blue light.
  - cubefox 2y ago
    Fancy way of saying they have a yellow tint (:

collyw 2y ago

I was looking it and thinking that's turquoise. Is it closer to blue or green? Meh, it's close to the middle.

jdhzzz 2y ago

I did it on IPS laptop display and got 175. On my OLED phone I got 179. I am more in agreement with the phone results, but the turquoise on the phone looked even greener to me.

trebligdivad 2y ago

I tried it twice, once on each of my two different monitors (a Dell S2817Q and Dell S2409W) made a few years apart and with completely different settings; and I got 175 on one and 174 on the other. So pretty close even given the difference.

adgjlsfhk1 2y ago

alternatively putting the color in a white box should provide enough context

Izkata 2y ago

> I suspect it tests your monitor and monitor calibration as much as your color perception. In particular, sRGB displays have a pretty severely limited green gamut. If you have a wide-gamut display, the test is probably gonna appear different. Also browser choice: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40401125 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40401125

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]