“How do you improve your color vision?”

One of my clients asked this question while we were discussing color options for a branded direct mail campaign I was designing. The role of the designer is often that of teacher. I gathered my color knowledge and guided him through a discussion of color and design. By the end of our conversation we had covered topics such as color vision, color psychology, color harmonies and color trends.

The more you work with color, the more aware you become of subtle differences. Much of color perception is simply understanding what you are seeing.

We can perceive billions of colors, which we have sorted into 12 hue families (based on Johannes Itten’s 12-hue color system), plus tints, shades, tones and neutrals made from the hues. We can generally differentiate between 24–32 levels of light and dark. A trained eye can discern even more levels.

Color Vision is Physiological

Have you wondered about your ability to see color well, and if everyone perceives color in the same way? Generally speaking, we do.

Color vision is a physiological function. If our eyes are operating as designed, we all see the same red, green, or periwinkle or close to it. We might use different names for these colors, but color perception works the same way for everyone.

While our experience of color may vary, our perception is mostly the same.

The exception is, of course, those who have some degree of color blindness or reduced vision. Due to lack of function of some of the retina’s photoreceptor cells, color perception may be limited.

There are ways to test your color perception. The Ishihara test uses circles made of colored dots revealing a letter or numeral. If the numeral is visible to the viewer, color perception is normal. If not, the viewer may be color-blind.

Color Mixing and Sorting

The practice of mixing colors, either digitally or with pigments, is a good way to train the eye. One method is to find natural forms and match their colors using both paint and Photoshop. Looking at a leaf, for example, try to determine if the green has more yellow, more blue, more red, or no blue at all (many “greens” are mixtures of yellow and black) and how vivid or dull the color is. This exercise is quite useful for strengthening your ability to see color accurately, if you do it regularly.

Color sorting exercises increase your perceptual abilities. Pulling colors from digital images and arranging them into different palettes is also useful. A single set of colors can be sorted according to brightness, lightness, hue family, and temperature (warm or cool).

I’ve compiled a list of six apps to help improve your color vision. Some of these are online apps, others work on Android or iOS.

X-Rite Color Test

Try this online color challenge from XRite. This test asks you to arrange several tiers of color swatches in chromatic order. The differences from color to color are subtle. For this test, the lower your score, the better you are at perceiving slight differences in color.

With visual training, you can improve your perceptual skills. This is a test that you can take over and over again to gauge how you’ve improved.

Blendoku

Blendoku by Lonely Few LLC presents color sorting puzzles of various degrees of difficulty and complexity. The user moves color chips from a line-up into sequential positions on a grid, according to pre-positioned anchor colors. Easier levels include more anchor colors. Harder levels have less.

This humble little game goes a long way in building color perception accuracy. Plus, it helps us understand how colors mix to form new colors — useful for artists and designers whether working digitally or traditionally.

Blendoku2 continues the color journey thorugh color chips with very subtle variations. Cost: Free. Offers in-app purchases.

Color Zen

Color Zen by Large Animal Games is a color matching game that increases in complexity as you complete the levels. Android app. Cost: Free. Offers in-app purchases.

Adobe Color CC

Adobe Color CC  is a handy palette-capturing app that syncs with Adobe Creative Cloud. Point your camera at a scene and the app scans and selects colors, creates palettes and stores them in Creative Cloud for later use. Cost: Free. 

Pantone Studio

Pantone Studio lets you capture and create color schemes from your photos, and provides color notations in RGB, hexadecimal, LAB and CMYK. Point the smartphone camera at anything and it will grab colors and create palettes which you can into your Adobe Creative Cloud libraries and use in your graphics programs. Cost: Free download. Subscriptions $4.99-$39.99

Interaction of Color

And then there’s the grandaddy of all color apps: Interaction of Color by Josef Albers created by the folks at Yale University. Based on Josef Albers’ color studies, class lecture notes, notations and paintings, it is an interactive accompaniment to his book of the same title. So far, this app is only available for iOS. Cost: $13.99

Recommended: Consider these books for your library:

More resources about color perception and systems:

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-viii-gabac-receptors/color-perception/

https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/sensation-and-perception-5/sensory-processes-38/vision-the-visual-system-the-eye-and-color-vision-161-12696/

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/humanvisionintro.html

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/index.html