I take issue with that claim that ordinary people can only perceive 1 million colors. That may be accurate but it nevertheless irks me. It serves as justification for the unfortunate situation we have today where although technology has existed for years to provide us with deep color, we are stuck with the 16,777,216 colors provided by 24-bit color.
Despite a large palette, there are several cases where 24-bit color depth yields obvious banding. I've ranted about this previously [1] so I'll leave it at that.
I can see gradient step on my HP 2335 (1920x1200) IPS display Monitor (with an LG display panel that was similar to what was used in Apple Cinema Displays of the time). Just giving verbosity of the monitor details for reference. Interesting read though and I found it surprising that even 24bit color can have issues like this. Possible that some high res IPS displays since mine have eliminated the issue (since the 2335 is 4-5 years old now). Wish my 2475 wasn't dead or I would test against that as well. I don't really consider either of these a good comparison, but I don't see it on my Nexus 7 or my Galaxy Nexus (though that's a Pentile AMOLED screen).
Some that cannot see it might have missed the author's advice at the bottom:
I received some great feedback from readers. Most importantly, it was pointed out that some low-cost LCD monitors down-sample to an even worse color depth such as 18-bit or lower. In fact, some readers were not able to see the difference in the colors above precisely because their monitor removed the difference by down-sampling.
The problem with some AMOLED screens is that the different colours efficiency decays at different rates. Which is why early versions of the galaxy(or similar samsung phone) always has that horrid blue-green tint to it.
Another problem is ambient light. if you're wearing a red tshirt, and there is a source of light other than your monitor its going to throw out the colour balance.
There's actually methods being worked on to compensate for color degradation in AMOLED over time[1]. Many of the AMOLEDs being used by Samsung are also Pentile (since they're cheaper to produce), which is even more likely to suffer from what you mentioned as well. Originally, phones like the Galaxy S and S2 did not have a Pentile screen, but starting with the Galaxy Nexus, I think they all have since (including the S3 and the S4, albeit higher quality ones).
With four cones, she may well be able to perceive electromagnetic waves outside the range we can. In other words, it may not be only about seeing finer colors, it may be about seeing more colors as well.
Why is this being reported as new, when there have been reports of such for some time now? For example here is a 2006 link to a very similar story (this time with names):
I wonder what university press release lies under the several stories with very similar wording that were published at about the same time last year. I note the submission here is at best a linkbait copy-and-paste of an article that originally appeared in another publication.
I think it's because people still think that this is esoteric and fiction, although scientifically proven.
Btw. only women have this ability. I believe the function of better eyes is to protect from predators or men, by differentiating more types of shades and therefore recognizing motion a lot earlier.
That last statement is wildly speculative. More likely is that it's because some key genes are present on the X chromosome but not on the Y chromosome. The same reason colour blindness is much more prevalent in males.
The real reason is that these genes sit on the x chromosome, which makes it possible for women to be heterozygotes. If one of the receptors is mutated and color-shifted, then women will be homozygous for the wavelengths of two of the three receptors, but heterozygous for the remaining receptor, which gives her two more wavelengths to interpret. Therefore, she will have a four-dimensional color space. A male with the same mutation does not have a normal copy of the gene, so still only sees three-dimensional color, with the third dimension different from what most of the rest of us see, which manifests as a type of color blindness, since the rest of society has engineered the world for normal RGB people.
Radiolab did an episode on Colors some time ago [1] and in one of the parts they discuss tetrachromacy and interview a supposed tetrachromat [2]. Worth listening to just because it's Radiolab and to see (hehe) how they convey colours through audio.
> Jordan said: "We now know tetrachromacy exists. But we don't know what allows someone to become functionally tetrachromatic, when most four-coned women aren't."
Is this really so confusing? To see 4 primary colors the cones must see different wavelengths. If the person has cones with only very slight differences in the frequency response then there will be no visible effect.
This also shows that people really do perceive colors differently - depending on which specific frequency you inherit you will see colors somewhat (or slightly) differently.
But most people only inherit 3 frequencies. Some rare ones (the tetrachromats) inherit 4.
It seems to me it should be possible to have 6 frequencies, but I'm not certain of the genetics.
An extra cone may not necessarily allow you extra colour resolution.
For example it might mean that there is less over all resolution (cones might not fit together properly) also the brain might not be using them, as there is no need. (optical nerve atrophy happens when you have a squint. This means that if the squint is not corrected at a young age the nerve will decay to the point where significant resolution is lost in that eye.)
You have to be aware of a skill to really take advantage of it. I work in the VFX industry, which means I can see orthogonal light sources a mile off (two clips shot at different locations could mean that objects are lit from subtly different angles.) Most people don't notice, as its not something they'd ever have to look for in real life.
As for colour, I wasn't that great (I have top 10% visual accuracy, or resolution) I took a hue matching test and came out just below average. After 6 years in VFX I'm top 1%
Seeing subtle changes in colour require a surprisingly large amount of practice.
Point of Order: "colour blindness" is a misnomer for what is more accurately called "colour deficiency" since being truly colour blind would mean you saw only in some kind of grayscale.
Source: my father is an OD and my brother has almost no red cones at all.
There's evidence that a person's culture and upbringing can influence the range of sounds or shades of colors they can distinguish.
So there might be many people with the potential for tetrachromancy, who just haven't had it trained-into-them by challenges as they learned vision and color perception.
The researchers might want to take whatever performance tests they use to verify tetrchromancy, and make them into a progressively-harder game for children... to see if with early-enough practice the capability is more widespread.
Even mantis shrimp that grows in shallow water can see different colors than the same shrimp that grow in deep water. Mainly shallow water shrimp can see red better, because the red light gets absorbed quickly as light goes deeper.
FTA:
" ... an ordinary person can perceive a million different hues of colors."
and
"... the hues familiar to trichromats fracture further into more subtle shades of differences that have not been given names since most of us are trichromats who cannot see these shades and name them."
Wait, we have a million named colors? Or a significant fraction of a million? I'm assuming they aren't referring to naming conventions like #ff6600.
Pretty pitiful that the authors assume only 100 color graduations for her added color axis, and that normal folks can differentiate almost exactly 1 million colors. "99 million more" is such a random stab.
I take issue with that claim that ordinary people can only perceive 1 million colors. That may be accurate but it nevertheless irks me. It serves as justification for the unfortunate situation we have today where although technology has existed for years to provide us with deep color, we are stuck with the 16,777,216 colors provided by 24-bit color.
Despite a large palette, there are several cases where 24-bit color depth yields obvious banding. I've ranted about this previously [1] so I'll leave it at that.
[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/24-bit-color-sucks