Color Changes in Mac OS X for the Visually Impaired?

drdink asks: "I am an avid FreeBSD and Windows user. This semester for a class I'm having to use MacOS X for the first time, and I've also been pondering jumping into the Apple scene anyway. However, I am also visually impaired and I can't seem to find a way to do specific color theming in a way similar to Windows, KDE, and GNOME. I want to be able to say 'Text is white, backgrounds are black, but EVERYTHING ELSE is its normal color.' The only options I've found that are similar is using 'White on Black' in the Universal Access control panel. However, this results in me losing all display colors and my machine looking monochrome. I don't want to use a $2,000+ machine just to have no colors. Is there anybody out there who has actually managed to get Mac OS X to use the normal colors but have high contrast white on black dialog boxes? I am interested in the Apple platform, but I can't use it for useful things, if I have no color."

Total colour control

[mrthoughtful]

You can obtain total control over the screen colour by using an ICC colour profile for your monitor.
It's pretty cool- unless you're calibrating at D50. (In which case it will be rather warm, if you don't get the mild humour).

The profiles live here.
/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays/
I (Ben) even wrote a freely available ICC profile editor back in 1995. You can find it on this stranger's [boscarol.com] page.

Amazing. it still works. (on OS 9) - I lost all the source code, so it never got beyond beta, and it will never get to OSX. Although it was released under shareware, there used to be an accompanying note that said it is now freeware, but this guy has an old copy.

Making ColorSync color blind

[mckeever]

During WWDC this year, one of the presenters showed how certain files can have ICC profiles embedded in them that can translate the color palette in radical ways. They were using this to verify that apps were using colorsync correctly and not double applying it. After this, I started digging and (in Panther, anyway) you can use ColorSync Utility to install custom output filters to adapt colors any way you like.

For instance: They include an output filter for CMYK (4-color printing) that prints everything in sepiatone.

There's absolutely no reason at all that this facility couldn't be used to do some funky color translations for the screen to help color blind people see it better. Obviously, this would require a better knowledge of the various types and degrees of color blindness than I have, but it could be useful to many and should automatically effect all apps on the machine