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Comment by harrall | Hacker News Reader

People are freaking out about this test like it’s some judgement of their character or something. I just picked “green” or “blue” without thinking.

The biggest problem here is that people have wildly uncalibrated monitors that often have color cast tints. I color calibrate my monitors and even my factory calibrated MacBook has a slight green tint.

People should also do hue differentiation tests like this one to see if they have any color deficiency: https://www.xrite.com/hue-test

That’s way more interesting.

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> The biggest problem here is that people have wildly uncalibrated monitors that often have color cast tints. I color calibrate my monitors and even my factory calibrated MacBook has a slight green tint.

Even if anyone actually calibrated their screens, many cheap monitor panels are so shitty the calibration can’t help. I bought two 4K LG monitors at the same time and based on serial numbers, they’re likely from the same batch but LG likes to mix panels on their cheaper products. They have wildly different color spaces to the point where one swallows several points of grayscale*, which means I have to use the right monitor when viewing sites otherwise I lose the subtle gray-on-white that designers love so much.

* black crush I think its called

I'd love to see a photograph of a 32 bit greyscale gradient on both. I wonder if some monitors with similar issues would not be able to represent the photograph properly.

Haha I think that hue test needs some help though:

“ Best Score for your Gender -2147483648 Worst Score for your Gender 2147483647”

Also f.lux and other software that changes color temperatures depending on time of day :)

People are not freaking out just pointing out stupidity of such test with 2 options only, no need for hyperbole.

By what method would you suggest calibrating one's monitor? I use Debian Linux if that's a factor.

You can do it on Linux but you need to buy a device you attach to your monitor. I have a Spyder X Pro but there are others.

It’s like $200 and it’s not worth it unless you do color sensitive work (photo editing, printing or video editing) and you have an expensive monitor or expensive laptop with good color support. Many monitors will fail so badly the calibration won’t be able to fix it.

But if you’ve ever had a lot of trouble trying to get colors to match when printing or between devices, it could be a godsend, although it’s only one of the many reasons colors might not match.

Thank you.

I wonder if photo stores might have the device, and if they would loan it. I'm surprised there is no method of calibration against common objects of known colour, such as Euro bills.

If you use the proper profile for your monitor and set the monitor to a profile that's relatively accurate it should be decent

Thank you. I'll research that.

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