What cataracts “look like” …..

[Rand47]

You may find this interesting, or not!  LOL    Had cataract removal surgery on my left eye this last Thursday.  All went perfect.  By the end of the day Friday the vision / acutance of the “new eye” was pretty darn good.  It’s supposed to improve  over the first week or two, to whatever “best” will be, but I’m thrilled with where it is “already.”  What I found fascinating, and a bit disturbing, had to do with the difference in “color contamination” between the fixed eye, and the other one (to be fixed this coming Thursday).  Corrected blurry vision notwithstanding, I was shocked to see a nasty yellow-ish cast when looking through my right (unfixed) eye as compared to the pure and uncontaminated color perception of my fixed left eye.   I’m very grateful that I use L a b to do initial color balance in my work.  Finding what should be a neutral in the image and then getting the a and b channels to zero, at least as a starting place.  My hanging prints looked even better than I could imagine through my fixed eye, and the difference when I closed that eye and only looked through my right eye was disturbing, to say the least.  I think the principle of “memory color” must have been at play to some degree for at least a couple of years, because my work didn’t “look contaminated” to my unfixed eyes.

Then I got to thinking that after this coming Thursday’s surgery to correct the other eye, I’d no longer have the opportunity to close one eye and then the other to see the dramatic difference.  So I took a printer test file into Photoshop and put a new layer on top.  Then swapping eyes back and forth, and turning the layer on and off, I used the color picker and layer opacity to get an exact “visual match” to illustrate what the contamination from cataracts “looks like.”  I had to do a global contrast adjustment and black point adjustment to get it “exactly right.”  Then I saved the file ….

Here’s a side-by-side of the two.  Straight print of the file on left, the “cataract version” on the right!  I printed the side by side on 17x22 Simply Elegant Gold Fibre and am going to give it to my eye surgeon.



(This side by side is just a screen capture from the print module in LrC.)

Pretty remarkable.  I’m thinking that a lot of the folk “doing these surgeries” never have the chance to really see what a difference they are making for their patients.  They get lots of “stories” but I can provide “what it actually looks like” to at least this patient.

Hope you find this interesting.

Rand

[David Eckels]

Welcome to my world! Left eye done 3 years ago, right eye "not bad enough" yet.
But what you've shown, Rand, is exactly what I see too. I'd love a file I could print and give to my doc too.

[Rand47]

Welcome to my world! Left eye done 3 years ago, right eye "not bad enough" yet.
But what you've shown, Rand, is exactly what I see too. I'd love a file I could print and give to my doc too.

David, 

PM me.  I’d be glad to send you a copy of the “cataract file.”  And if for some reason you don’t have the printer test file in the “unmolested” version, I can send that as well.

Rand

[rasworth]

I had the same effect, was happy to be free of it.  And I also went through the second eye "not bad enough" with my ophthalmologist.  I hit him up with my concern about night vision and driving, that did the trick.  They need a valid argument for the insurance company.

Richard Southworth

[Chris Kern]

I had the identical experience, and did the same corrected-eye / uncorrected-eye tests between my cataract surgeries.  It never occurred to me to document the change the way you did, however.

Pretty remarkable.  I’m thinking that a lot of the folk “doing these surgeries” never have the chance to really see what a difference they are making for their patients.  They get lots of “stories” but I can provide “what it actually looks like” to at least this patient.

My primary ophthalmologist and my cataract surgeon (same medical practice) both actually were aware of the issue for photographers, and the former mentioned that he had several other photographer patients who were astounded at the strength of the yellow cast they had been looking though before their cataracts were removed.  But I suspect you're correct: ophthalmologists who aren't photographers or painters themselves, even though they are aware of the improvement in color vision offered by the surgery, probably don't appreciate the significance of it for that category of patient.

Another big benefit of cataract surgery for me—a "high myope"—is that for the first time since I started using my father's rangefinder as a kid, I don't need to wear glasses to see clearly through a viewfinder.  I opted for an implant in my non-dominant eye that would leave it slightly nearsighted (but not enough to require me to wear glasses for driving) so that I could see the camera controls and menu selections without putting on reading glasses.

[GWGill]

Just a note - it's not cataracts that cause the yellow - it's the normal aging of the optical elements in our eyes that causes the yellow.
This is reflected in the CIE2006 observer model "age" parameter for instance.

[Jonathan Cross]

This takes me back.  My mother-in-law lived in a part of England where there are few bluebells but there are wild daffodils.  We live in part of England that is the opposite; there are masses of bluebells each spring.  When she came to live with us she said the bluebells were not as good as the daffodils where she had lived.  She then had cataracts done in her late 90's (she lived to 101) and suddenly thought the bluebells were wonderful. 

This correspondence makes me think she may have had a yellow cast in her pre-cataract removal vision.

Best wishes,

Jonathan