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I'm sorry if this is off-topic here; please feel free to migrate it if it is.

Given the hex coordinates of a colour, and a type of colourblindness (e.g. protanopia), how do I calculate how that colour would appear to a person with that type of colourblindness? I've been throwing this at Google for a while now and it yields nothing no matter what search terms I use.

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    Not offtopic at all, this is a quite good question. More designers should be aware of this issue.
    – Rafael
    Feb 1, 2017 at 21:35
  • I found this after a quick web search... github.com/MaPePeR/jsColorblindSimulator (I know, I know... No links). Not sure if it will help. Feb 1, 2017 at 21:47
  • How much time do you have? You need to implement a full ICM engine and then make or get a profile. Or you could just use a off the shelf open source icm. This is a very very deep rabbithole. There are naive ways and then there are accurate but tedious ways.
    – joojaa
    Feb 1, 2017 at 21:58
  • oops sorry meant CMS aka color management systems. see how icc profiles work.
    – joojaa
    Feb 1, 2017 at 22:05

2 Answers 2

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Ok, I just went right down the Rabbit hole with this one. RIP work!

I was looking over the code on https://github.com/MaPePeR/jsColorblindSimulator and they have listed in there the colour matrixes they use to adjust the colours based on the type of colorblindness. Maybe these will help? I posted the link earlier above I just thought I post again in the form of an answer.

enter image description here

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Well, you could simply generate an image with your color combinations and use a color blind simulator:

https://www.google.com/search?q=color+blind+simulator

For example this:

http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/

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    I'm not interested in using a simulator to mutate images for colourblindness; I'm interested in creating such a simulator. So I need to know how they do it.
    – EMBLEM
    Feb 1, 2017 at 21:44
  • My first thought was the trial and error method too, but there must be a calculation someone could use to change a colour, say in a style sheet, for whichever type of colorblindness is being targeted. This is a really neat topic. Feb 1, 2017 at 21:44
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    @GoofyMonkey there is: a color management system paired with a lookup type icc profile can do this. Such profiles are available from serious medical studies.
    – joojaa
    Feb 1, 2017 at 22:04

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