FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[James Catmur]

We all see mineral colors slightly differently, and knowing how others see a particular color is interesting.

I did this test and my boundary between blue and green means that some of the minerals you see as green I see as blue. The test correctly states that, to me, turquoise is blue (as is purple)

https://ismy.blue/
(link normalized by FMF)

[bob kerr]

As a color challenged male - red-green color blindness or deutan - I was able to get an average score (176) by cheating and calling what I see as gray - green! if there was a "neither" button I would've chosen that quite a bit.

Would be very cool to see a red-orange version of this. Some people think crocoite is red - others think it's orange - I think it's crocoite. Similarly, with vanadinite.

No wonder azurite is my favorite mineral.

bob

[Bergur_E_Sigurdarson]

I've not noticed much disparity in how people express green vs blue, nor red vs orange
....the one I very regularly notice is people calling fairly obviously pink things either blue or purple.
I wonder if some of those may be cultural, or even for many men, not having grown up with using as much of a diverse vocabulary for colours as women do.

I also wonder if a slight possible factor could be the colour of our irises ?

[alfredo]

There are cultural differences in color perception too. The Japanese call a lot of shades "blue" which we would call "green" in the Anglo world. Even traffic lights are called red and blue in Japan, instead of red and green.

[James Catmur]

I see the traffic lights as red, red, white! Morrocan traffic lights often failed to register at all.

[James Catmur]

My challenge is very similar. Like you I often saw gray, but called it green.

Repeating it on a different device gave different results - I realized that that is due to me using a color filter on one device but not the other. With a color filter my score is much lower and almost everything is blue!

[Riccardo Modanesi]

Hi to everybody!
As a gemmologist I can have some considerations. First of all a colour perception is very subjective and personal, nevertheless there are some percentage of primary colours compounding a colour itself (see the Colour Atlas of Biesalski, an old university text, but still a valid one). For example, one colour could be compounded by 40% yellow, 40% blue and 10% white, which means an intense emerald green!
Secondly, even a diamond grading is sometimes difficult due to its colour, usually we use the GIA scale, from D to Z. Nevertheless, many gemmological institutes DO NEITHER publish an analysis NOR send an analysis out, until THREE unanimous opinions are achieved. There are very elaborated instruments and machines which everybody can measure a colour by. Nevertheless, do you know what I usually use to do it? MY EYES!!! And the biggest majority of gemmologists do so!
Greetings from Italy by Riccardo

[James Catmur]

My problem is that my eyes are faulty as I lack many of my green sensors. I cannot rely on my eyes but have to ask a friend (or avoid minerals whose colors I cannot see well). That may be why I focus on form over color.