Posts tagged with "ismyblue"

September 17, 2024

First there was “the dress,” then there was “the sneakers”—and now there’s a debate over the color blue, reports the New York Post.

In fact, if you’ve ever argued with a friend over whether something is blue or green, you’re not alone. But now there’s a way to get closure: A new test called “Is my blue your blue?” reveals just how different—or how similar—your color perceptions are compared to everyone else’s.

The experiment was created by neuroscientist and AI researcher Dr. Patrick Mineault—and it all started with a debate over a blanket.

“I’m a visual neuroscientist, and my wife, Dr. Marissé Masis-Solano, is an ophthalmologist,” Mineault recently told The Guardian. “We have this argument about a blanket in our house. I think it’s unambiguously green and she thinks it’s unambiguously blue.”

The researcher and programmer was working with new AI-assisted coding tools and designed a color-perception test.

The website ismy.blue will populate a full screen of one color, and it will ask the user if it is green or blue. Colors on the screen will gradually become more similar until the site concludes where on the spectrum you lie.

“Colors are often represented in HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) color space,” Mineault also explained to the Daily Mail. “Hue 120 is green, and hue 240 is blue. The test focuses on blue-green hues between 150 and 210.”

However, if you see a color that you want to identify as somewhere in the middle, like turquoise, you still have to choose whether the color is blue or green to you.

The website ismy.blue will populate a full screen of one color, and it will ask the user if it is green or blue.ismy.blue

“In early experiments, we found that people’s responses cluster around 175, which coincidentally is the same as the named HTML color turquoise,” Mineault said.

“This is interesting, because the nominal boundary between blue and green is at 180, the named HTML color cyan. That means most people’s boundaries are shifted toward saying that cyan is blue.”

A user’s ending threshold distribution is based on other people who also took the test, so they can compare to the general population.

“I added this feature, which shows you the distribution, and that really clicked with people,” Mineault explained. “‘Do we see the same colors?’ is a question philosophers and scientists—everyone really— have asked themselves for thousands of years. People’s perceptions are ineffable, and it’s interesting to think that we have different views.”

The website launched in August and has already seen more than 1.5 million visits in about a month.

“I’m not super surprised that it struck a chord because people want to understand how others see the world,” Mineault said.

The neuroscientist explained that perception of color is generally “tricky to measure.”

“Vision scientists use specialized calibrated equipment to color perception. Graphic designers use physical color cards, such as those made by Pantone, so that they can communicate colors unambiguously,” he said.

Don’t worry if your results are very different from the rest of the population. There’s nothing wrong with your vision.

“Getting outlier results doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your vision,” Mineault explained. “It might mean you have an idiosyncratic way of naming colors, or that your monitor and lighting are unusual.”

There are many outside factors that can affect your perception, such as the model of your phone or computer, how old the device is, display settings, night node, ambient light sources, time of day, and that color is presented first.

As for the color of the blanket, the ruling is still out. “We’ve taken the test a bunch of times,” Mineault shared. “As soon as there’s a little green in there, I call it green”—but his wife still sees blue.

Research contact: @nypost