# According to this stupid color acuity test on FB... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 27, 2012, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421 "2012-06-27T03:17:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/21 "2012-06-27T05:32:09Z")
You can improve your score substantially if you use the zooming feature in your browser to blow up the magnification to 400 or better and turn off the lights in the room to improve contrast. Also bear in mind that some monitors (especially low priced or older flat panels LCDs) are not that great at showing subtle color gradations so it may not be all you if you are looking at what appears to be a smooth gradation and the test is beating you down. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/22 "2012-06-27T05:39:14Z")
> [@Kenm](#): > > Is it worth the time to do the test when probably every monitor used in this thread has different colour characteristics? > > Really, each monitor would have to be colour calibrated with pro equipment (and probably be a professional CRT — unless I’m too far out of date) so each would match the others before the test could be expected to produce anywhere near legitimate, comparable results. > > Relax, high scorers. The colours can be different even between two different browsers on the same machine. I _did_ take it on a pro-caliber LCD (no CRTs in the business any more) calibrated with the same X-Rite tools that the site is promoting. Even if not, absolute values for each tile might vary, but they should maintain the same relative values for all but the worst, bottom-of-the-barrel displays. So the test is quite valid. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/23 "2012-06-27T05:57:28Z")
I got 93. I thought that was a good score until I read the small print. An interesting test to while away a few minutes on a boring Wednesday afternoon. I think I’ll send it round the office and then we can all compare scores. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/24 "2012-06-27T05:59:02Z")
I got a 20. I found it easier to not look directly at the square I was interacting with but just off to the side. It made the difference a bit more noticeable. Also, I’m sure a lot of it has to do with working on a cheap uncalibrated screen. The monitor I have on my other computer that I bought for photo editing cost about the same as what I paid for this laptop, and I calibrated it. Similarly, I remember back in high school, when we were watching a movie and the lights were off, it was easier to read the (classroom, analog) clock in the darkened room by looking about a foot off to the side of it. ---
**Author:** ![One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/838e76/32.png) [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/25 "2012-06-27T06:07:11Z")
39 here… ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/26 "2012-06-27T06:11:19Z")
I got a 40. That’s not so great. But I already know I’m red-green colourblind, so no real surprise. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/27 "2012-06-27T06:16:53Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Similarly, I remember back in high school, when we were watching a movie and the lights were off, it was easier to read the (classroom, analog) clock in the darkened room by looking about a foot off to the side of it. That’s a little different. Your retina has two basic types of receptors–rods and cones. Cones are mostly in your central vision (the fovea) and are adapted for sharp color vision. Rods predominate in your peripheral vision and are adapted for dim light. Hence, you can often see very dim objects (such as stars) better if you avert your gaze slightly. As for why looking to the side might help here: it could be that you’re depending more on the difference in brightness than hue, and the rods will help with that. Another possibility: the fovea is itself subdivided into a central (foveola) and outer portion. The foveola has very densely packed cones, but almost no S-cones (the ones responsible for perceiving blue and violet). So your hue discrimination may be increased by looking just outside the foveola. ---
**Author:** ![nonacetone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonacetone/32/2819_2.png) [@nonacetone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nonacetone)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/28 "2012-06-27T07:09:33Z")
57 for me. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/29 "2012-06-27T08:50:33Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > I got a 20. I found it easier to not look directly at the square I was interacting with but just off to the side. It made the difference a bit more noticeable. I did the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Minnie\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Minnie\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Minnie_Luna)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/30 "2012-06-27T13:48:43Z")
24, I think I will blame it on my crappy monitor. ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Smith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e95f7d/32.png) [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/31 "2012-06-27T14:10:56Z")
I scored a 21, but took the privacy screen off my monitor and went again, and got a 10. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/32 "2012-06-27T14:19:37Z")
129, the set up was weird though, each line had 2 boxes in a lower line and it wasn’t clear where they were supposed to fit into the specturm. ie, line 1 had the start and end boxes and most of the moveable boxes. Line 2 had 2 moveable boxes. The window was small when I started which could have caused this but expanding it did not fix the issue. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/33 "2012-06-27T14:20:24Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That’s a little different. Your retina has two basic types of receptors–rods and cones. Cones are mostly in your central vision (the fovea) and are adapted for sharp color vision. Rods predominate in your peripheral vision and are adapted for dim light. Hence, you can often see very dim objects (such as stars) better if you avert your gaze slightly. > > As for why looking to the side might help here: it could be that you’re depending more on the difference in brightness than hue, and the rods will help with that. Another possibility: the fovea is itself subdivided into a central (foveola) and outer portion. The foveola has very densely packed cones, but almost no S-cones (the ones responsible for perceiving blue and violet). So your hue discrimination may be increased by looking just outside the foveola. I do not think rod vision is relevant here. In good lighting conditions (good enough to see colors clearly) the rods are essentially contributing nothing at all to the visual experience, because they are all stimulated well above their threshold, even by the less bright parts of the retinal image. Rod vision is only functional in dim light, and in brighter light (normal daylight illumination, or indoors with the lights on) peripheral vision is subserved by the handful of blue-sensitive cones that are out on the periphery. (There are no red or green-sensitive cones out there, so we cannot discriminate colors in far peripheral vision. This can be quite easily shown experimentally, even though it conflicts with many people’s subjective impression of their peripheral visual experience.) I would doubt that brightness is an issue either. If this teat has been constructed properly, the patches should have been equalized for brightness. However, there are no blue-sensitive cones _at all_ at the very center of the retina, the foveola (or macular pit), which is also where the red and green cones are packed most densely, providing the best discrimination of fine detail. Furthermore, the red and green cones themselves are distributed randomly and very unevenly (mostly in irregular clumps) in the parts of the retina where they are found (the foveola, the fovea, which is the area around the foveola, comprising about 2º of visual angle, and which does contain blue-sensitive cones, though not nearly as many as the red and green ones that are still packed quite densely there, and the parafovea, the area around the fovea, where the cones are clustered less densely and rods begin to appear). For these reasons, it probably is indeed true that you will discriminate colors, especially when blues are involved, when you are not looking absolutely straight on at the patch (or transition between patches) in question. Because of the very uneven distribution of the red and green cones, it probably also helps to have your eyes moving about a bit (not that you can actually avoid that). Surprising as it may seem, there is evidence from recent experiments that eye movements do play a role in color vision. With this test, I found that after I had got things in fairly good order, it helped to move my eyes back and forth along the color line, looking for uneven transitions. I found a few that I had not noticed when looking just at two or three adjacent patches at a time. I scored a 9. Not bad, I think, for a guy of 60 who has had cataract surgery and suffers from floaters. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/34 "2012-06-27T14:26:04Z")
Done it before - perfect score. It’s a test of the fidelity of your monitor, as well as your eyes. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/35 "2012-06-27T14:31:08Z")
I got a 4. I’ve always been good with color, and one of my jobs is picture framing, which requires a good eye for color matching. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/36 "2012-06-27T14:32:04Z")
1. I think I got 23 the last time I took it. ---
**Author:** ![Trom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Trom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trom)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/37 "2012-06-27T14:48:26Z")
Scored 52 28 yr old male I’ve been told that my vision is “color deficient” by eye doctors before, but not bad enough to be considered color blind. I guess this test pretty much fits with that. ---
**Author:** ![Sudden\_Kestrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecd19e/32.png) [@Sudden\_Kestrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sudden_Kestrel)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/38 "2012-06-27T14:56:45Z")
I expected to do poorly on this because my vision is deteriorating badly as I age, but I got 22. I didn’t care enough to find out how I compare to my age group. I’ll have my husband do that when he takes it. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/39 "2012-06-27T15:05:48Z")
Jesus, I got a 234. ☹ [Here’s my spectrum chart.](http://imgur.com/PTrGq) Hoping it’s mostly my LCD monitor and bright lights in my office causing this. Otherwise, I’m colorblind. ---
**Author:** ![Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/4bbf92/32.png) [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heart_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2012, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421/40 "2012-06-27T15:07:33Z")
Zero! Yay! Now I finally have something to put on the shelf next to my “Participant” ribbons from Field Day! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/according-to-this-stupid-color-acuity-test-on-fb/626421.md?page=3)