Being a professional graphic artist, I am aware that there are only 3 primary colors ( Cyan, Magenta and Yellow ) including black. And all colors are different shades or mixtures of these.
Several people have commented on my unique color of eyes. My eyes are a very deep blue. In fact they are so blue … they sometimes photograph violet.
So it got me to thinking … Has anyone or any organization mapped out all of the unique colors of eyes that is possible in people?
I swear the other day … I say a 3 year old girl at church last Sunday with Golden eyes.
As a professional artist you would aslo know that with three basic pigments, and an ability to blend them in any combination you can create an infinite number of colours. This is exactly what we get with human eyes. The colour possibilties are limited only by where you choose the line between one colour and the next.
Then of course you have the capacity for different colours in different parts of the iris, which increases the infinite possibilities by an infiite amount.
I disagree. In most cases there are a maximum of 2 colours for the eyes. One colour for the left eye and one for the right. Again, in most cases these colours match.
Well, obviously it’s not an infinite selection as I’ve never seen anyone with red irises (ires?), or yellow, or silver, or…
I recall reading something about blue eyes being a recessive gene and brown being dominant, and a combination resulting in hazel/green etc. Anyone who actually understood what the hell their science teacher was talking about on that day care to elaborate?
Blue eyes are definitely recessive. You need two alleles before you can have blue eyes, whereas anyone with a single allele for brown eyes will have them.
As far as I know, the colour of your eyes is dictated by how many of a certain gene you have “switched on.” If you only have a few, your eyes will be paler in colour to someone who has a lot of them “switched on.” Sorry I can’t be more specific, I wasn’t listening that day either!
When it comes to variations in iris colour, can some be explained away like this? For example, someone with very very pale blue eyes could be said to have grey eyes, and someone with a very deep blue (like the OP) could be said to have violet eyes. The only problem with this theory is I can’t think of any explanation for people with green/hazel eyes, but no doubt someone who knows what they’re talking about will come along, as these colours clearly exist.
The difference between green and hazel is something of a matter of taste, too, but if you get ‘pure’ green eyes vs. ‘pure’ hazel, you’ll see a difference. Hazel has more brown to it. You can “explain away” eye colors in that manner if you like, but even if you say there are only a few colors, there is a lot of variation within them.
In this classic Straight Dope column, Cecil says “Eye color is mainly a function of the pigment melanin. If your eyes have a lot of it, they’re brown. If they don’t, they’re blue. (Some details of this explanation are in dispute, but don’t worry about that now.) Green eyes result from yellowish flecks of fatty pigment against a dark background. Some men think a green-eyed woman is exotic. The truth is she’s got fat eyes.”
I’ve got green eyes myself, so
I dated a guy whose real eye color is the exact same as the yellow smiley here. Violet eyes run in my family too. Sometimes they can look almost lavender but most of us have either green or blue eyes.
I think the OP means, in the three-dimensional color space of CMY, what is the shape and size of the region where eye colors can be found.
And another thing to confuse issues. My eyes aren’t a solid color, and I imagine most people’s aren’t. Mine are green, but looking closely there’s some sort of weird orange-and-white cobweb thing going on. I guess that’s the matrix of fat… Anyway, are we just talking about eye color averaged over the iris? Because although 3% of my iris is orange, I suspect that it’s fairly rare for someone to have “orange eyes”.
Where I come from the primary colors are called X, Y, and Z. There are many colors that cannot be made by mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow, but there is no color that cannot be made by mixing X, Y, and Z in appropriate proportions. (Of course, these colors are theoretical. Yay, mathematics.)
On the eye color issue: I’ve seen black, brown, hazel, green, blue, violet, gray, and pink, as well as combinations and variations thereof. I myself have blue eyes with a green ring around the pupil.
I see eyes up close every day (being an optometrist and all, kinda part of the job.) The eyes that I’ve seen can have an almost limitless variation on color, within reason. I’ve seen eyes that were so blue that they looked fake, and eyes that were so dark brown that they were black.
What’s funny is that I don’t typically pay much attention to eye color anymore unless it’s striking, or the patient wants colored contact lenses (since the base color has bearing on what type of color lens will work best.)
I’ve also seen many an eye that had unusual combinations of pigments. Most common in that group is a green iris with a light to medium brown ring around the pupil. I’ve seen some that have dark, wedge shaped marks on otherwise light eyes (typically on one eye only) and many cases of nevi on one or both eyes that look basically like freckles. I’ve had one or two heterochromics with one eye color vastly different than the other (typically the result of disease). I’ve never examined a pure albino, who I’m told have very reddish pupils. I’ve had patients with light eyes and then “crusts” of brown that seemed to float above the iris by a few tenths of a mm.
I’m still trying to determine what to describe my eye colour as (I started a thread about it awhile ago). Right around my pupil is a ring of rust-orange; it’s not a thin ring, it’s quite noticeable and solid. After that is a weird shade that’s usually grey with a touch of blue in it. If I wear purple eyeshadow and whatnot, they look a lot greener. I have no idea what to call my eye colour. Even the Secretary of State, when I was getting my license, said, “uh… just give me a colour to put down”. Heh.
my eyes have red, grey rings and green and yellow speckle thingies, so it is possible to have red eyes, my mom’s eye color almost looks like a marble stone with many different colors in it and lines, it is very weird looking, anyways.
Achernar, they come from the CIE XYZ standard. The XYZ space is a linear transform of RGB space (as defined by the CIE) such that all three components are positive for all visible colors. They have no specific meaning, except that Y is effectively the same as luminance.
We don’t use CMY(K) to describe colors because the correspondence between tristimulus values (in RGB or XYZ) and CMYK ink values is dependent on far too many things, including the specific inks, the printing process used, the paper users, and the conditions in which the printed matter will be viewed. Photoshop provides “rough” CMYK translations based on certain “standard” assumptions (white paper of a certain optical brightness [92, I think], certain standard inks, and the D65 illuminant) which may or may not be true in your specific situation. The CMYK values reported by Photoshop are not likely to be the ones actually used when printing the image (depending on your color profile settings).
Violet eyes run in my family too. Sometimes they can look almost lavender but most of us have either green or blue eyes.