I’m not sure I can even begin to work out how to do this but perhaps it’s something that comes with practice (something I usually don’t consistently have time for). I normally do these sorts of things by experimentation in post-processing.
Then I guess we do function differently. It was difficult from this discussion to understand what was semantics and what was actual difference. I have to emphasize though that for me it’s very fleeting and hard to “grip” but I can certainly imagine quite well how a scene would look like black and white.
Always very difficult to put into words what’s going on inside a person’s head. I have no idea if you see blue the same way I do, for example. I’m still not sure I’m able to explain it well.
Just curious: @elstoc, do you see the scenes vividly when you read? I do, even though (as I mentioned before) I also have problems with the ‘pre-visualise the final photograph’ advice.
No. I see no mental images. Perhaps occasionally vague impressions of an overall scene or parts of it if well described. But fleeting and vague as if viewed through a thick fog (for want of a better description). I have trouble calling such impressions “images” but I can’t find a better way to describe.
There’s a Vividness of Mental Imagery questionnaire that has a 1-5 scale from “like normal vision” to “no image”. I suppose I’m probably 4-5 on most questions.
I score higher on things I’ve photographed and heavily edited.
No. If you are making a photograph of a flower, and you know you want to increase the yellow saturation and decrease the green to feature the petals over the leaves, then you’ve pre-visualized.
If you merely see the flower, you’d say, “Oh a flower” and that would be the end of it.
Semantics really. Perhaps I could do this with small numbers of changes but I’m not visualising the result.
Hardly. If you know the steps you need to take to make the photo into something that resprsents your feelings/sentiments, then you pre-visualize. Whether you see the actual image in your head or not doesn’t matter.
When language is ambiguous both parties can be correct 
As one that also has aphantasia I think I undestand what elstoc is trying to say and what it is that you, paperdigits, is saying.
The term ‘pre-visualize’ means: To visualize or predict a result.
You are talknig about the predict part, which can be based on knowledge (I know that red and yellow make orange), and @elstoc and I are talking about the visualize part, which is actually “seeing” the result (I cannot see this orange I talked about).
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I have known at least two intelligent people who were so aphantasic that they said they could not read any work of fiction. Authors work very hard to use words to “draw” mental images, but these people stated that they absolutely could not visualize any of the things being described from the words. I also believe that both of these people had strong ADHD.
One of them was my father-in-law. I cringed when he read stories to my children, because they did not sound like stories, just strings of words with no emphasis or emotion.
The whole post you made points, seen from my aphantasia but non-medical back-grounded opinion, to deeper problems then just being unable to visualize what is written. The ADHD part might be the more dominant here and explain the problematic handling of the emotional parts that are shining through.
I love to read (99% being fiction), but as I mentioned in my first reply in this thread: This disorder does influence my reading to a certain extent. Although the genre does make a difference, I do believe that the writing style of the author is the key factor for me. How world-building is set up in Sci-Fi/Fantasy is an example.
I noticed over the years that authors that only set up a bare framework in their stories I tend not to be able to enjoy. On the other hand writers like, for example, Dan Simmons, China Miéville, Ted Chiang and Jeff VanderMeer are very good at putting onto paper what they envision. I’m not able to visualize it, but there’s enough of a filled in framework to enjoy it very much.
But that only tends to be important in Sci-Fi (space opera in particular), Fantasy, New weird and the likes. This issue isn’t al that present in, for example, novels like the Your Face Tomorrow volumes (Javier Marías) or The Waiting Years (Fumiko Enchi). These tend to focus on and describe human behaviour/interactions.
But in the end, the bottom line is this: Yes, aphantasia does influence reading and although I do not really know what I’m missing I do think I miss something essential.
I think this is one of the reasons I prefer sci-fi and fantasy to be somewhat grounded in reality. The different-ness of the worlds the authors build makes it much harder for me to follow the stories.
In that case, try Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. Most of the story is in present-day Chicago, and even the rest is mostly like the real world (the Winter Fae have castles made of ice etc., but they are still variations of the familiar human world). And his magic is, I think, quite logical (and sometimes hilarious). Check out the recipe for his ‘escape potion’ (each potion needs eight ingredients: a liquid base, five other to engage each of the senses, one the mind, and one the spirit):
- Base: 8 oz. of Jolt cola
- Sight: A flickering shadow
- Sound: Mouse scampers
- Smell: A drop of motor oil
- Touch: Shavings of a bird’s feather
- Taste: Three oz. of chocolate-covered espresso beans, ground into powder
- Mind: A shredded bus ticket
- Spirit: A small broken chain
I like Charles de Lint for the perfect mix of real life and fantasy.
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