Am I colorblind or normal?

[Nikia]

I never considered myself colorblind and I always pass those tests with numbers easily. At work though, I have discovered that I have less than perfect color vision and it makes some aspects of my jobs more difficult.
I check the strength of sanitizers by indicator paper. Depending on strength, the color goes from yellow to dark green. I often have difficulty judging whether the shade of yellow green is closer to one category than the other.
I have a difficult time judging cheese shade. There are various shades that colored cheese is suppose to be ranging from pale yellow to dark orange. It is obvious that there is a continum but I have a difficult time judging the right shade of yellow orange. We sometimes have to match samples to get new business, one of my coworkers complained that we hadn't gotten the color to exactly match their sample. I was puzzled. I thought that they were the same color.
Is there much a thing as near shade colorblindness? Is this a physical defect or does distingishing close shades just take time, patience, and experience?

[Ediacara]

1. It could just be the lighting

:shrug:

[Nikia]

3. Maybe

Both my boss and my older male coworker could tell that they were a different shade of yellow orange though. I suppose that they could have been lying. They tend to back each other up.

[burrowowl]

2. Yes there are degrees of colorblindness

and require comprehensive testing to detect.
Also with aging the yellows start to become less distinct.

[RC]

4. Women usually have less of a problem

with color blindness. It is sex link to the male Y chromosome. Are you using florescent lights? They change color temperature as they age. Also they come in cool white, sunlight and dozen other colors.

[Philosophy]

5. You could have blue-yellow colorblindness

Since your examples all have yellow in them, and those number tests don't measure that they just measure the much more common red-green colorblindness.

[Doctor Smith]

6. It's the lighting

You need lights with a color temperature above 5000 degrees Kelvin and a color rendering index (CRI) above 90 to properly distinguish the kinds of colors you described.

You need to get lamps described as daylight fluorescent, such as the Chroma 50 lamps.

[sandnsea]

7. My daughter & I see colors differently

I know that because I was in her bathroom and told her I was going to use her green brush and she asked if I meant the blue one. It's a teal blue/green color. And the brush is always in her bathroom so it's not the lighting. I think people do see colors differently. I know that doesn't help you with your job. Maybe the next time you have to do this, ask a couple of people to see whether it's you or not. Or just put together 10 different samples and ask your friends and family over for a color test party. Maybe it's just specific colors you see differently. Gads, how awful. You've worked so hard to get where you're at (I'm guessing), and now this. Good luck!!!!

[cosmicaug]

8. Other problems (or no problem at all) possible.

I'm pretty sure problems other than color blindness could cause differences in color perception. For instance, my grandmother commented on improvements in color perception after she had a cataract removal operation (this is easy to understand as the removed crystalline lens did exhibit some yellowing). I would guess other issues might be possible. I imagine if people had different densities of normal cones (not color blind) in their retinas would have to exhibit different levels of color discrimination (though I have absolutely no idea how significant a factor this is in real life). Also, I would guess that one would expect people with deficits in their central vision (macular degeneration and that sort of a thing) to lose some or most of their ability to discriminate colors simply because of the fact that it is in the central area of the retina where the highest concentrations of cones (and thus color perception) are found (in contrast, the periphery is more rod rich and thus better for perception in low light situations).

Or there could be no problem at all (as DinoBoy mentions, ligthing is a non-trivial issue).

Then you also have to take into account that there are several different kinds of color blindness and that the sort which will be diagnosable by one test won't be diagnosable by a test designed for the other (see the normal and tritan test views vs. the protan and deutan test views at http://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html the "hidden" number is easily visible for both the person with normal color vision and the person with the tritan color vision defect but not to people with the other color vision defects).

There's an interesting web site which claims to be able to correct images to enhance contrast for the viewer with a given color vision defect at http://www.vischeck.com/daltonize/ (it links to the webexhibits section on color blindness linked above).

It is, I believe (IIRC), even possible (though very, very rare) to see more colors than the rest of us (but then, I'd imagine that you'd be wondering why the customers can't tell different colors apart and not the other way around).

[Nikia]

10. The colors I'm talking about are really close

They are closer than the closest colors in the largest box of crayola crayons, maybe even like three or four shades in between close. It wouldn't be a problem except that this seems to be a handicap for me in my job. Maybe better lighting would help. Things do look different to me depending on how close they are to the light.

[pansypoo53219]

9. i think many people have varying degrees

of colors they lack. i did a very psycodelic colorful drawing style and wondered how people actually percived it. sort of like how some people have stronger senses of taste or smell or sound. i am rather hypersensitive in most ways.