Why is yellow hard to see?

[Gav1n]

What's special about the colour yellow that makes it harder to see against a white background than the other primary colours?

[bernardo]

It is too pale.  To be able to see it properly on a white background, you would have to make it darker, in which case it would become orangey or browny.

[Gandy]

It's due to the wavelength of the photons that are detected by your eye.  As yellow and white have a similar wavelength the eye has difficulty in distinguishing between the two.  Any colour is dependent on the way the it reflects light.  White colours reflect a lot of the light that falls upon them whereas black reflects only a small amount of light.  If there is no light then everything looks the same colour (if it can be seen at all)

[Thunderchild]

First condider that the colour we r most sensitive too is green hence yellow is more difficult to see.

also consider contrast... what is the difference between yellow and wite. well i work at a printers and can tell u that we leave yellow for last because it is generally the most heavy colour and best left till last this is because in comparisson to black u need more yellow to make it visible

[slimfandango]

Cos you're a monkeyyyyyyy.

Well kind of, but you descended from them via the apes. cf Boesch (I think). Think hard about this and you'll get it.

[slimfandango]

Oh yeah, sorry Gandy by the way, but colour opponency in vision is not a feature of the eye but V1 and V2 in the visual cortex. Your eye (well, the retina) (well, the cones) have receptors that can pick up yellow real well, but the opponency tuning is done much later than the ganglion, way past the optic nerve and into the back/upper back of your head.

I think (will need to check) that this might be a learned process. But in evolutionary terms, it's cos you're part monkey. Let me know if I should explain this, don't want to bore anyone.