Photobleaching

Oversaturation of the Photoreceptors (opsins).

Since the Rods are much more sensitive to light, they are useful in low-light conditions. However, in bright light, they are overwhelmed by photons and are essentially ‘saturated’ with light and therefore go ‘inactive’. When reentering a dark room, the photobleached Rods take a long time to reset to normal functionality.

Cones are less sensitive, which is why they are useful in bright light, but they can also be photobleached with very bright lights. Flash Blindness is a type of photobleaching that occurs when the light source is of short duration, but extremely high intensity, such as a nuclear explosion, flash photograph, lightning strike, strafed laser, etc.

Photobleaching is often used as a dangerous method for Color Normals to temporarily experience Colorblindness. To do so, an individual shines a bright light through the eyelid of their closed eye. The blood in the eyelid filters the light to red, and the red light disproportionately Photobleaches the L-Cones over the M-Cones and S-Cones. When the light is removed, the individual’s color vision in the affected eye temporarily exhibits a Protan defect. Naturally, this is not recommended as it can permanently damage the Retina.