Converting colour scale from typical spectrum to Deuteranopia spectrum

After taking some test photos at Calton Hill ( see: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/dmsp-perspective25/2025/03/03/carly-and-zixuan-at-calton-hill/ ), I decided to try producing the change in colour on the images. It is to be noted that these were test images taken on an iPhone, and it is expected that the final images will be taken with a professional camera and with different lenses, such as wide-angle or fish-eye lenses.

As we researched, we know that dogs see in a yellow and blue scale of colours, contrary to the common belief that dogs see in black and white(“What Colors Can Dogs See? Can Dogs See Color?,” n.d.). This is also known as Deuteranopia, Red-Green color blindness, which also affects some humans.

“There’s a myth that dogs only see in black and white. However, a dog’s vision is actually comparable to the vision of roughly 9% of humans with red-green color blindness. Dogs have dichromatic vision, meaning they can see shades of blue and yellow in addition to shades of gray, but they cannot see colors such as red, orange, and green.” (Petch 2023)

Different website options

I tried different websites to change the images, but sadly, I couldn’t find one that worked well enough.

• TrustedHousesitters
• Woof me!
• Pilestone Color Blind Experts
• Colblindor

Here are some examples of what I could obtain from these websites:

Some images don’t display the change correctly, some show colours that are excluded with deuteranopia, some are too dark, some wouldn’t let me download, and all would greatly degrade the image quality.

Trying Adobe Photoshop

The only way I could get the images to look a certain way was via Adobe Photoshop. Sadly, when exported, it wouldn’t show as the process would be done with the “view tool”.  This seems to be a common problem (“Dogs Color Vision – Help/How To – Shotcut Forum” 2018) (“Export Photo/Video With Color Blindness Simulation” 2022)

I need to do more research to find out how to export these images with the Deuteranopia effect on them; for the moment, I’ve opted for screenshoting.

Results

Here, we can see the altered images:

Here, we can see the original images:

Conclussion

After comparing the website’s obtained images with the ones from Photoshop, I’ve concluded that Photoshop is the answer for the effect that we are looking for. However, it is important to keep in mind that I have to do more research to find a way to export them without losing quality or to find a better tool to change the colour scale.

References:

Mar 3, 2025