
Scientists find woman who sees 99 million more colors than others (2012) - colinprince
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/326976
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bhauer
Awesome.

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>

~~~
yareally
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._

~~~
KaiserPro
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.

~~~
yareally
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).

[1] <http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijp/2013/839301/>

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btilly
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):

[http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/some-
women-m...](http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/some-women-may-
see-100-million-colors-thanks-to-their-genes-450179/)

~~~
X4
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.

~~~
JimJames
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.

~~~
rohitrohit
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.

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macieka
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.

[1] <http://www.radiolab.org/2012/may/21/>

[2] <http://www.radiolab.org/2012/may/21/perfect-yellow/>

~~~
acchow
Great Radiolab episode. On a related note, the Crayola-fication of the world
[1] and XKCD color survey [2]

1\. [http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/06/05/the-crayola-
fication...](http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/06/05/the-crayola-fication-of-
the-world-how-we-gave-colors-names-and-it-messed-with-our-brains-part-i/)

2\. <http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/>

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ars
> 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.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
The Mantis Shrimp has 16 distinct cones. Plenty more than 6 are possible.

~~~
ars
I meant in humans.

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csense
If I was a mutant with superhuman powers, and this was my capability, I would
ask for a refund.

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na85
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.

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gojomo
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.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
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.

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aptwebapps
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.

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erlkonig
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.

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pjdorrell
"Scientists find woman who sees one more dimension of color than others"

