Notes. Representation is defined using the effective number density of sources for cosmic shear studies, n_eff, in each of the gold samples relative to a reference sample n_eff. For the fiducial representation statistic, we use the full KV450 photometric data set for reference (i.e. ), while all other gold sample representations use the fiducial for reference (i.e. ). The statistics are all given per tomographic bin. The table demonstrates that each of our nozCOSMOS, noVVDS, and noDEEP2 gold samples has preferentially removed a different section of the colour-space. This is joined, however, by a shift in the mean redshift of the tomographic bin, indicating that the loss of the colour redshift space has been accounted for in the reconstruction. As expected, the multispec3 selection is highly restrictive, removing 30 − 45% of the fiducial photometric n_eff in every bin.