X-Rite color test

My uncle Jerry, who is a landscape painter, showed me this interesting test online, which evaluates your ability to differentiate shades of color (basically testing for any degree of color blindness).  The test can be viewed and taken here.


The test is administered by a color technology company called X-Rite (which owns the company Pantone Inc., who is well known for their color matching system that is used as a color benchmark in different industries, such as printing companies).  


I scored a 7 on the color test, which I think is pretty good (zero is the best score).   A few people I know who took the test, whom are not artists and are not impressed by working with colors, did not score as high.  However, I do not feel that the test scores are extremely valid. While taking the test, it was immediately apparent that patience and effort were critical to success.  Anyone who blew through the test and settled on something less than their best evaluation of the colors, would not score as high.  Thus the resulting test score could really not be a measurement of their "color blindness", but rather their impatience. Indeed, some of the differences in shade of color were quite subtle, and without proper attention and comparison on the part of the test taker, one could easily score lower than necessary.  On my test results, I could see differences in colors which the computer claimed I had had trouble, which might mean that if I had concentrated a little harder on the test, I would have scored better.  Also, there's no accounting for the way that different monitors display color, so I suspect that some colors which should appear different, have no discernible uniqueness at all on some computers.  I've worked on some monitors in which the color is absolutely horrible (in comparison to the gorgeous hues on my current computer, an Apple iMac).   


Still, the test is quite interesting, and could be of some value.  If you put in your best effort and still struggle to score well, it could indeed indicate that you have some problem with color blindness.  I found the test to be rather eyestrain inducing.  :)