Color Blindness / Deficiency

[Kevbo717]

Hey guys! I am extremely new to the whole photography world. I Have had my Nikon D3000 for about 6 months now and have been trying to take pictures of everything and anything. Ive been "color deficient" since i was young and have noticed how big of an obstacle this becomes with photography. I'm looking for some tips / pointers from people who have the same problem with being color blind or deficient. How do you adapt your camera settings to accommodate for this? Also, any good tips for post processing in terms of colors.

Anything will help ! Thank you in advance for your tips and comments !

--Kevin

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by Kevbo717

Hey guys! I am extremely new to the whole photography world. I Have had my Nikon D3000 for about 6 months now and have been trying to take pictures of everything and anything. Ive been "color deficient" since i was young and have noticed how big of an obstacle this becomes with photography. I'm looking for some tips / pointers from people who have the same problem with being color blind or deficient. How do you adapt your camera settings to accommodate for this? Also, any good tips for post processing in terms of colors.

Anything will help ! Thank you in advance for your tips and comments !

--Kevin

What colors specifically are you deficient in seeing? There are certain "benchmark" RGB values for different skin tones, which may make it easier for you to do numerically, and also by watching the histogram. I really wish I could be of more help. Hopefully someone will chime in that is in a similar situation, that could help you with a workaround.

[IABoomer]

I myself am slightly red colorblind. I can see reds, but distinguishing fine shades of red tint is difficult. My father in law is terribly colorblind, yet he does drawings/watercolor paintings. He has a contact lens he can put in one eye to help him distinguish colors. That, combined with having someone compare some swatches will get him to the color he needs.

If you have someone verify some of your adjustments, you can make sure you're not overcooking things and eventually probably calibrate your perception enough to make the adjustments without help.

Alternatively, you could say screw it and shoot black and white.

[Tzetsin]

i might suggest doing black and whites

[Kevbo717]

Haha thanks Tzetsin but as much as i like black and whites , its not all i want to work around .
Rlucas and Boomer , I'm red / green color blind where , same as boomer , i can see both colors but they tend to blend together sometimes and the tint or brightness and saturation of the colors just fade.
Also , being still an amateur, the histogram is not something i'm completely comfortable with to know the in's and out's of how it works or reads ..
I definitely have people that would love to look over my photo's and comment on the colors and other things , but i would also love to be able to come up with a way to manipulate my camera and settings etc . on my own.

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by Kevbo717

Haha thanks Tzetsin but as much as i like black and whites , its not all i want to work around .
Rlucas and Boomer , I'm red / green color blind where , same as boomer , i can see both colors but they tend to blend together sometimes and the tint or brightness and saturation of the colors just fade.
Also , being still an amateur, the histogram is not something i'm completely comfortable with to know the in's and out's of how it works or reads ..
I definitely have people that would love to look over my photo's and comment on the colors and other things , but i would also love to be able to come up with a way to manipulate my camera and settings etc . on my own.

Hamm? If it's a saturation issue. If you look at the histogram. You will have an R value for red, a G value for Green, and a B value for blue.. Just to help you get started, generally the farther apart the R,G,and B peaks are from one another, the less saturated the image will be. The closer they are makes them more saturated. What you could do, as someone mentioned before, is to have someone you trust look at your images, and tell you what they think. Keep a note of where the RGB peaks are in relationship to one another, (not necessarily where they are on the histogram itself) and eventually I think you could probably train your eye to see some of the subtlties you can't at the moment.
I don't know what type of software you use, but in LR, I can crop to a specific area of the image, and the histogram will represent just that part only. You could try that too on areas you are finding hard to compare.

[Kevbo717]

Originally Posted by RLucas

Hamm? If it's a saturation issue. If you look at the histogram. You will have an R value for red, a G value for Green, and a B value for blue.. Just to help you get started, generally the farther apart the R,G,and B peaks are from one another, the less saturated the image will be. The closer they are makes them more saturated. What you could do, as someone mentioned before, is to have someone you trust look at your images, and tell you what they think. Keep a note of where the RGB peaks are in relationship to one another, (not necessarily where they are on the histogram itself) and eventually I think you could probably train your eye to see some of the subtlties you can't at the moment.
I don't know what type of software you use, but in LR, I can crop to a specific area of the image, and the histogram will represent just that part only. You could try that too on areas you are finding hard to compare.

Thats another question i was going to ask . What editing software do you use ? Also , as it will take me some time to adjust with coloring issues and setting and all that , what photo / editing software do you use? LR is light room correct ? How is that program compared to others like photoshop and others? Also is there options to auto correct tint, saturation and enhance colors etc. ?? Thanks with the help histogram . I'll be going out tomorrow with my camera and will definitely be keeping an eye on that and try noticing what your talking about.

[deadgirlreading]

There was a thread a while back (which isn't coming up on a cursory search or I'd link it directly) which mentioned that there is a red/green colorblind color mode in Photoshop. You may want to google it.

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by Kevbo717

Thats another question i was going to ask . What editing software do you use ? Also , as it will take me some time to adjust with coloring issues and setting and all that , what photo / editing software do you use? LR is light room correct ? How is that program compared to others like photoshop and others? Also is there options to auto correct tint, saturation and enhance colors etc. ?? Thanks with the help histogram . I'll be going out tomorrow with my camera and will definitely be keeping an eye on that and try noticing what your talking about.

Yeah, LR is Lightroom. You can do most if not all color corrections from there. They do have an autocorrect feature, but I haven't been too impressed with it so far. It always takes my images way too red.
Good luck with it, and I hope someone can give you better advice.

[NicoleScraps]

Originally Posted by deadgirlreading

There was a thread a while back (which isn't coming up on a cursory search or I'd link it directly) which mentioned that there is a red/green colorblind color mode in Photoshop. You may want to google it.

Seriously?? My oldest son is red/green deficient and he would love this information. He is always messing with PS and different photo apps on his phone as well. I'll have to search for that.