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Re:Tetrachromats: people who see colors invisible to most of... by _nalply on Monday November 18, 2019 @08:37AM (#21564173)
Interesting idea, however I think this is too simple. With three cones we have a three-dimensional space of color. We can express this space with RGB or HSV and so on, just by a three dimensional basis vector we can describe one color point in the color space.

With tetrachromats we get a four-dimensional space of color. So we need something like RGBX or a two-dimensional hue value like for example H1,H2,S,V. That's what I meant with a second hue circle orthogonal to the one we already know.

What we see as yellow is for the tetrachromat a whole second hue circle varying in the value of second hue.

An example: Yellow is a point on the first hue circle. For the tetrachromat these colors are different, but boring yellow for us:

- pure yellow

- mixture of red and green

- mixture of pure yellow, red and green

In other words, what we see as yellow is a whole dimension of different colors for tetrachromats.

Re:Tetrachromats: people who see colors invisible to most of... by roywiggins on Monday November 18, 2019 @01:19PM (#21566662)
They also would probably be able to distinguish yellow+blue from pure green.

Also, if you mix R+B, that's magenta, and if you start mixing in blue it will turn white or gray. But if you can see yellow, RYB would look different from R+a little g+B, which is what RYB would look for trichromats, I think.