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Right, this is a point that randomly came to me whilst fixing my Sister's boyfriend's laptop. It's this-Look at this image:

Now, I know that's red, and you know that it's red. But there's one thing we don't usually consider.
How do we know we're seeing the same colour?
Since it's pretty hard to actually describe a colour, we can't really say what it is we're seeing, so whilst we just accept something'sas normal (I.E this text is blue), how do we know what blue actually is? For all we know, my green could be your purple and your purple could be my green.

/Discuss

Oh god, Ive been thinking about that for ages. I suppose some people could be seeing colours that you may think do not even exist.

We know that people's eyes can distort or misinterpret colors. That's what happens to the various degrees of color blindness. My cousin can't distinguish certain shades of green (very common), and only barely passed the physical for the Marines because of it.

As for your purple being my red...maybe. Kinda weird, actually.

What are you talking about? That isn't red! It's gurplood!

I've thought about this before too, since I was young. It's a different concept than color blindness though, a better description of might be "color switching," and if it existed (I'm not saying I think it does, it's just an interesting thought) it would be impossible to discover it just by talking to someone. You probably wouldn't know without doing some kind of test on the brain or something, and maybe not even then.

Maybe the color I see as blue, someone else sees as what I would call red. But we both call it blue. Neither of us would know the difference, because we both would have been calling it blue our whole life, and to each of us, it is "blue."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course, there is the the whole thing with how light and wavelengths of different colors, which would be consistent, so if "color switching" as I'll call it exists, it would have to do with how the brains of different individuals interpret the wavelengths.

Based on my knowledge of colour theory, computer monitors and compression technology, almost none of us are seeing the same colour, even if none of us have colour vision defect like me.

The only way to tell a colour on computer is by the RGB values.

I don't know about computer monitors, but paint, at least high-end artist paint uses specific chemicals and substances for pigment, so it's the chemical makeup of that stuff that determines the color. And people generally agree on what color these paints are, so I think that there is no debate.

warpcrafter wrote:I don't know about computer monitors, but paint, at least high-end artist paint uses specific chemicals and substances for pigment, so it's the chemical makeup of that stuff that determines the color. And people generally agree on what color these paints are, so I think that there is no debate.

It's not about the chemical makeup of the pigment. It's more about how our brains interpret the colors. People could all agree on the name of the color, and the wavelengths, and the pigments, and still be seeing different colors. If you and I both don't have a color vision defect like color blindness, but what we both call "blue," and what I see as blue looks to me like what you would call red, and what you see as red looks like what I would call blue, we would never know the difference because everything we've ever seen that we both call "blue," and both agree is blue, is actually perceived as a different color in our brains.

Dont forget that some animals see a much larger spectrum of colors; and it is widely believed humans only saw in black-white grey scale and red a long long time ago... (in a galaxy far away?)

warpcrafter wrote:I don't know about computer monitors, but paint, at least high-end artist paint uses specific chemicals and substances for pigment, so it's the chemical makeup of that stuff that determines the color. And people generally agree on what color these paints are, so I think that there is no debate.

People agree because the whole topic has been extensively researched using science so that standards can be developed.

The colour of paint can be measured using a spectrophotometer, to ensure regularity to the formula. And so on.

There are still differences between batches of the same colour, so when you go to buy the paint to paint your dining, they advise you to buy the tins all from the same batch.

When you show a colour on a computer monitor you have the following variables:

1. The "colour" (it's RGB value)
2. The compression algorithm.
3. The monitor's settings for gamma and so on.
4. The other colours displayed on the rest of the monitor. If a monitor is showing a lot of white, a colour will look darker.
5. The light in the room the monitor is set up in. This will vary by intensity and colour temperature.
6. The viewer's eye.

Almost no-one outside high-end graphics, photo and TV studios bothers to control for any of this, so colours we see on the Internet are rather variable.

Kilkrazy wrote:
When you show a colour on a computer monitor you have the following variables:

1. The "colour" (it's RGB value)
2. The compression algorithm.
3. The monitor's settings for gamma and so on.
4. The other colours displayed on the rest of the monitor. If a monitor is showing a lot of white, a colour will look darker.
5. The light in the room the monitor is set up in. This will vary by intensity and colour temperature.
6. The viewer's eye.

Almost no-one outside high-end graphics, photo and TV studios bothers to control for any of this, so colours we see on the Internet are rather variable.

Oh. I got it now. You're talking about the "Red" picture in this thread, and you're absolutely right about that. I'm talking about something different though.