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Why we're blind to the color blue

calebkruse.com

171–180 of 218 posts

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#171

I don't believe the blurred images at the end have anything to do with eye focus, as the author suggests. After all, chromatic aberration is blurring of only a very, very small amount. The demonstrated seemingly negligible perceptual effect of blurring blue to a huge degree in a multicolor image doesn't seem to have anything to do with that, but rather the fact that we perceive primary blue as a much darker color tha…

I dunno, but when I look at glowing blue signs and blue Christmas lights at night, they look significantly more fuzzy than other color lights.

Does this only affect people with Blue eyes ? As someone with utterly black eyes, I don't have a problem looking at glowing blue signs and don't find them fuzzy either.

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#172
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, but when I look at glowing blue signs and blue Christmas lights at night, they look significantly more fuzzy than other color lights.

> At long last, we can see why the human eye can't focus on blue light At long last indeed. For decades I wondered why blue lights are disturbingly blurry at night, to the point I'd rather not look at them. I always thought it was just me since other people didn't seem to care as much.

I hated blue christmas lights because of this. Also, I couldn't read the time on the stove from any reasonable distance since it used blue LEDs.

After LASEK, though, I can see blue LEDs nearly as clearly as everything else. My eye surgery gave me nearly 20/10 vision and the greatest thing I got from it was the ability to read the stove clock from across the room. Lol.

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#173
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I picked the "blurred blue" and "blurred green" pictures, converted them to grayscale using luminance and "blurred blue" still looks sharp and "blurred green" still looks blurry. If it really was the effect of blue light, the effect should have disappeared by converting to grayscale. It is well known that luminance matters much more than color when it comes to perceived sharpness. Digital and analog video expl…

There's a difficulty with testing perceived color by using a computer display, which is that the "blue" is the spectrum of the blue pixels, whereas the "blue" receptors in your eye may have a different spectral response. Where I've noticed weird things with blue are with blue sources that have fairly short wavelengths, such as some of the blue LEDs used in Xmas tree lights, and the old blue lights that were on police…

>such as some of the blue LEDs used in Xmas tree lights, and the old blue lights that were on police call boxes. Both of those are very hard for me to focus on

This happens to me as well and I though I was becoming blind (to blue light) because of my heavy use of monitors/"white" light, etc...

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#174
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At long last, we can see why the human eye can't focus on blue light At long last indeed. For decades I wondered why blue lights are disturbingly blurry at night, to the point I'd rather not look at them. I always thought it was just me since other people didn't seem to care as much.

I’ve found my people! I have similar issues and nobody I’ve ever spoken to about it seems to have the same experience. Two similar issues I’ve had, and I’ve wondered if they’re related, are: - at conferences with very large overhead projection sometimes the setup produces an effect where each time I blink it’s like it separates the RGB elements. It’s like a combination of being able to see the refresh rate (like when…

That's most certainly the display sequentially flashing red, green and blue sequentially in time to approximate shades and hues. When you stare right at it, your eye averages the photons with a time constant of 1/30th of a second or so, and so you don't perceive the flicker. When you move your eye or blink, though, individual portions of your eye are exposed to only relatively narrow time slices, and so re only exposed to the red, green or blue photons.

Cheaper DLP projectors use a single light source and mechanically spin a color wheel with alternating red, green and blue filters. They look great when staring at it, but if you move your head or wave your hand in front of it, you can easily see the three color channels.

Perhaps those stadium displays are DLP projectors based, or maybe they're RGB LED and are simply PWMed at a relatively slow rate. Most LEDs can be switched very fast, at say 10Khz, but maybe there's electrical limitations of building such a large high brightness display. If it's only PWMing at 100-200Hz, you'd see similar effects. In particular, each color channel will be on for different duty cycle durations, and LEDs are very fast to turn on and off. So, when you move your eyes or blink, you'll once again get separation of the channels in your vision.

You can do a similar trick with your smartphone camera. Record video, and point it at the display then wiggle the phone up and down and side to side. The phone most certainly has a "rolling shutter" which means it captures an image sequentially in lines either horizontally or vertically. It does it quickly, but slow enough that different lines should be able to pick up colors. You may not even need to shake the camera up and down to see a funky image. It's the same reason why CRT monitors and TVs look funky on video but not film.

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, but when I look at glowing blue signs and blue Christmas lights at night, they look significantly more fuzzy than other color lights.

Does this only affect people with Blue eyes ? As someone with utterly black eyes, I don't have a problem looking at glowing blue signs and don't find them fuzzy either.

I have mostly brown eyes, so no?

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#176
post #95
post #10

Snell's work on optics would later be overshadowed by the GNU alternative, Fresnel.

I can't believe this awesome joke is getting downvotes. It's like pearls before swine, but I'm leaving it up so you can find out which amongst you are objectively bad people.

Explain the joke?

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#177

I don't believe the blurred images at the end have anything to do with eye focus, as the author suggests. After all, chromatic aberration is blurring of only a very, very small amount. The demonstrated seemingly negligible perceptual effect of blurring blue to a huge degree in a multicolor image doesn't seem to have anything to do with that, but rather the fact that we perceive primary blue as a much darker color tha…

It has a whole lot to do with our eyes having far fewer blue receptors.

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, but when I look at glowing blue signs and blue Christmas lights at night, they look significantly more fuzzy than other color lights.

Also the blue LED on a PS3. Those always looked blurry to me. It’s especially obvious because of the adjacent green LED.

You are so right! I always assumed it was the LED's problem until I started reading all these comments. I think I remember the PS2 having the same thing.

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#179
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe this awesome joke is getting downvotes. It's like pearls before swine, but I'm leaving it up so you can find out which amongst you are objectively bad people.

Explain the joke?

Presumably “Snell” > “FreeSnell” > “Fresnel”.

Re: Why we're blind to the color blue

#180
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're precious. Why don't you tell me what else my eye doctor has never diagnosed me with?

9 in 10 people have some affliction of astigmatism. Astigmatism is just that your eye isn’t perfectly spherical. What does your eye prescription say in the cyl and axis fields, that’s your astigmatism correction.

> About one in three people has some degree of astigmatism.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/8576-astigmat...

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