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

Around 5% of the population have some form of colour 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 colour vision conditions (deuteranomaly and protanomaly), as well as helping anyone with those conditions see colours more clearly.

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

The overlay adjusts colours to illustrate the effects of common vision conditions

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

The filter window may be maximised and used as a transparent overlay, adjusting the colours 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 colour 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 colour 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.