"Why does one have a red tint and the other slightly green?
Your retinas have two types of cells for seeing: rods and cones. The cones detect colors and, as it turns out, there are three types of cones. Each type is more sensitive to either red, green, or blue. Since nature rarely really does things identically, your eyes probably have slightly different numbers of the red, green, and blue cones (with blue being fewest in both eyes). Your eye that sees green better simply has more green-sensitive cones and your eye that sees red better has more red-sensitive cones.

Each of us has minor variations in the number of each type of cell, and the differences are strong enough for us to have noticed and wondered about it.


As to why both eyes look fine, that's a function of the brain. Some animal brains are more tuned to process movement than shape (For example, frogs really can only see something that's moving), others are more attuned to shape than movement. Human brains readily process both, and have not only pattern recognition but multiple pattern recognition (that's why we see the Peter/Paul picture as alternately faces and a vase).
When a person has crossed eyes (strabismus) their brain basically ignores one of the eyes (the weaker one) and they'll see only one image. If a person one eye that's simply a little weaker (my left one tends to be a little near-sighted), the brain will combine the 'agreeing' portions of the images and ignore the portions that aren't as well-defined. The same thing is true for the color viewing: your brain is able to sort of combine the good and cancel out the bad so that you see the best you can in each situation.

That's why you see a greenish tint with one eye, a reddish tint with the other, and fine with both."
(Iggy Pop's Teeth, Sun 21 Nov 2010, 13:16, 3 replies)

Or he's just sitting with a bright light to one side.
Low sun at 90 degrees to the direction I'm facing does the same thing to me.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Sun 21 Nov 2010, 15:28, closed)

ah thanks
not just me then :)
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Sun 21 Nov 2010, 15:50, closed)

Very good answer
I suspect that the eye with the red tint is less sensitive to red light hence he's seeing the brain's correction for it when he closes the other.

Fascinating stuff.
( pixel_fucker is going to need a bigger brush, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 9:02, closed)