Simulate color vision deficiency with Colour Simulations

Get involved in any graphic design project and you’ll probably spend an age choosing the color scheme -- but this shouldn’t just be about personal taste.

Around 5 percent of the population have some form of color vision deficiency, so it’s important to consider how they might see your finished design.

Colour Simulations is a free-for-personal-use tool which can simulate common red-green color vision conditions (deuteranomaly and protanomaly), as well as helping anyone with those conditions see colors more clearly.

The program works by displaying a movable, resizable filter over the screen. Right-click this, choose a color deficiency type, then spin the mouse wheel to maximize or minimize the effects.

If that’s not enough, you can also apply various color transforms (Brightness; Contrast; Saturation; Greyscale; Invert; Circadian light block; Color swaps and filters), again spinning the mouse wheel to adjust their intensity.

The filter window may be maximized and used as a transparent overlay, adjusting the colors of other applications (including video, but probably not full-screen games) in real time.

It’s all reasonably simple, and if you need to understand how color vision deficiency might affect the perception of a design then Colour Simulations is worth the download.

But if you’re only looking for something to make your screen a little bluer (or whatever), there are more lightweight options around. ColorVeil gives you basic color controls and does a good job of staying out of your way.

Colour Simulations is a free-for-personal-use application for Windows 7 and later.