Beware "blue blocker" eyeglasses for photo editing

Another blue filter story ?

I had a recent discussion with my ophtalmologist about the state of my growing cataract. Well, the surgery could be needed before the end of the current year. I complained about my recent experience when playing at Rummikub with my family.

Our Rummikub sample offers the traditional four colours for the tiles: Black, Blue, Red and Orange. Bad luck, in most artificial lighting, I can't easily tell blue from black, especially under dim lighting. "No wonder", she said, "your cataract acts as a yellow filter". So, I totally agree with Clive, our problem as photographers is to correctly assess the white balance, knowing that after the surgery, we'll be back to our original, non blue filtered vision.

In practice, I even resorted to use:

- a much brighter room lighting, since the filtering is less important

- different room light sources: LED sources have a fuller spectrum as fluorescent light, but they are sold mainly in 'warm' versions, 2700; 4000 Kelvin rather than 6500 K daylight.

- small pocket LED lamps to check the real tones of the tiles (with their bright light, I think that the color perception of the cones in the retina works much better)

Now, until I get the cataract surgery, I don't trust my personal white balance perception. What I can do is:

- to check my printed results in real daylight or similar artificial sources

- to calibrate my display more frequently with my Spyder

- to strongly ignore any gadget to filter blue. My cataract is protecting me !

Last word: Last sunday, my daughter invited us for a game of Rummikug. Surprise!  She had just bought the latest flavour of the game:  with bright CYAN tiles instead of blue ones.