Color and Vision

I have been color challenged on two fronts - color blind and color naming of various shades and hues, and the two add up to make it more complicated. I was, recently happy to come across a series of articles on NPR Color Decoded: Stories that span the Spectrum - especially the one on where they explain that color is perception.

In "These X's Are The Same Shade, So What Does That Say About Color?" Mark Fairchild of Rochester Institute of Technology explains that color is perception. To quote:

"I could change the color of illumination on that apple and make it look green or blue or something completely different," he says. "The redness isn't a property of the apple. It's a property of the apple in combination with a particular lighting that's on it and a particular observer looking at it."

And I was happy to understand that perceiving color is not easy, combine it with my color blindness, it explains the challenges I run into all the time!