"Why are you wearing that purple shirt?” my wife asked me the other morning.

“I thought it would match the blue stripe in my sweater,” I replied. “Then you should wear a blue shirt instead,” she advised.

We’ve had that exchange, or similar ones, countless times throughout the years. Every time, my wife patiently steers me away from the mismatched garment I’ve chosen and toward one with a more appropriate hue.

This is an example of how I, like millions of others, have learned to live with color blindness. My perception of certain colors is off, but at least it’s consistent. I know that my “purple” is probably blue. My “brown” is almost always green. And my “red” is most likely to be brown. This allows me to make my own color corrections with a fair amount of reliability. When I reach for that “blue” shirt, I usually tell myself, “That’s not really blue, it’s actually purple.” At this point though, I’m guessing, and sometimes I’m wrong.

Although being colorblind can be annoying, I don’t regard it a handicap. At worst, it’s an inconvenience. In fact, the only time I wish I wasn’t colorblind is when I meet people who discover my visual limitation and insist on quizzing me about it. “What does this color look like to you?” they’ll ask repeatedly, while pointing to a nearby object. This quickly gets tiresome, though it seems to be endlessly fascinating to them. Those asking the questions are sincerely interested in what I see, or don’t see.

Anyone who has ever wondered about how we see colors will want to read contributing editor Barry Santini’s excellent article, “The Science Behind Color Enhancement,” in this month’s issue. Barry delves deeply into this complex topic and explains it clearly and concisely. His curiosity about color is infectious. Regular readers of 20/20 should find this to be one of the most compelling of the many articles he’s written in these pages. I certainly think it is.

Color me impressed.

Andrew Karp
Group Editor, Lenses and Technology
[email protected]