re: The pink and orange are barely distinguishable and the blue and green are barely distinguishable. And who knows what color that brown is?

well there is color (take a crayon of red or blue or yellow)(primary' colors

these are pretty 'pure' colors.. then there are complementary colors (orange, purple, green)
and there are colors between all these colors, (yellow orange, orange yellow, blue violet, red violet..

but there are also shades and tones (take red, add some black (shade the color) and you get red to turn into marroon.. take the same red, and lighten the the color by diluting it, or adding white, and you get a shade of pink..

if you have a range of colors (blue, yellow, green, pink, violet) that are all about the same shade or the same tone its very hard to tell them apart --(the younger you are the easier it is.

fiberbabe- will know this too-

there is a tool used by quilters (and others) that is made from dark, but pure red acetate. (its a sheet) and its used to measure contrast. color alone doesn't create contrast. you also need to have different intensities of color. when you look at a range of all pastel, or all mid tone, or all shades of colors, through the red 'filter' they can become all a shade of redish grey. (often the same shade of grey!

but a mixture of yellows, from the palest yellow to a pure yellow, to a ocher or other shade of yellow will be clearly different shades of grey.

the trivial pursuit colors all have the same tonal value.. but if they had different tones, even by candle light, you would be able to tell the colors apart.


my other obsession