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Human vision is an illusion. It’s mostly inferred, and not representative of how the world actually looks, and I think that’s pretty cool and profound.
Please explain how the world actually looks
I don’t think there’s an objective answer to that
Whitebalance comes to mind. Human eyes perceive the long rectangles’ tint as a base color, i.e. effectively neutral/white.
So yeah, a blue dress in a yellowish light might look the same as a yellow dress in a bluish light.
This is ridiculous and I hate it.
I had to copy the image in Paint and select the colors to believe they were the same. Goddamned witchcraft, I say!
The one that always gets me is the light/dark image that has the same grey in two places, and on one side it looks like darkness and on the other like light.
Basically, these: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=grey+illusion+light+dark&ia=images&iax=images
Paint is compromised, they are in on it!
This actually helped me.
Oh come on, not this again
and they were roommates
I was for quite a while like “what is so suprising about two different sets of colors”
I don’t get it. Are they suppose to look similar with the filters applied? I see both dresses underneath the filter, very clearly. On the left is the same black and blue dress with a yellow filter effect, on the right is a yellow and white dress with a very clear blue filter on top.
The point is that a black-and-blue dress, when brightly lit, will look eerily similar to a white-and-gold dress, when it’s in shade.
Ok, i just dont see it then.
It’s a demonstration of how tinting can make two different colors appear the same. Zoom in and you’ll see it
Left vs right:
Holy shit.
Holy shit, what? Both colours displayed are the exact same colour.
I don’t see it either. I still see it clearly as black and blue on the left and gold and white on the right, even with the filter they are trying to apply overlaid.
There is nothing to “see”. They are, on your screen, identically coloured on the left and right in the “boxed” sections.
Yes, they look different to you. They are not actually different colours. That is the optical illusion.
You got it backwards, the point is they look different but are actually the same colors
Yeah, you’re supposed to be able to see they’re different.
The majority of the image being grey gives your brain the context required to realise each half is being tinted, so the white balance isn’t shifted like in the original “the dress” meme.
This is more of a teardown of the illusion, than a demonstration. Looking at the bridge, it becomes clear that even though in the wider context you can see that the dresses are separate colours - when compared directly, they’re indistinguishable when tinted under the other’s major colour.
Meaning that in the original “the dress” meme, how you perceived the dress’ colour depended greatly on how you perceived the tint/white balance in the surrounding areas of the photo (or how it was displayed on your device).
I’ve seen the dress on multiple different types of screens and it has literally always looked blue and black.
I have a hypothesis that the dress just shows that lots more people have some weird issues with color. Not necessarily outright color blindness but moreso just general processing issues. But what do I know I’m just some asshole with photosensitivity.
The first couple times I saw the dress I saw it as white/gold. But after learning it was black/blue I stared at it and the colors seemed to shift in my brain. Now I can’t see the white/gold for the life of me.
Same, i simply cannot find any other explanation for it. Apparently a significant amount of the population cannot do white-balancing in their head.
I have to assume they still experience the more physical white-balancing from light depleting the stuff in cone cells though: that thing where if you close one eye for a bit while looking at a sunny landscape, then open it and compare to the other eye by alternating which one you close; you’ll see the world tinted… i think it’s blue-green-ish and red-ish depending on the eye. Different tint depending on the eye, at least.
I could get my brain to see it differently by adjusting my phone’s brightness and viewing angle, but it wasn’t as voluntary as other illusions (like the Ben10 figure one)
I even messed with my phone’s blue light level and still no change.
Yeah i am with you. I never understood how anyone saw gold.
So, when you say that you never understood how anyone saw gold are you
a) Seeing an extremely washed out image and compensating
or
b) You are literally seeing a solid black and a navy blue i.e. there’s basically an insignificant amount of difference to your eye between the black part of the dress and #000000If it’s the former that might explain some of the difference in opinion, if it’s the latter then I have no idea how I would manage to interpret it as black.
Sorry, I’m team gold. We’re real! I’ve never seen blue in the original image.
Yes, but the black and blue is actually exactly the same color as the yellow and white. They’re both the same color but one looks black/blue while the other looks white/yellow.
Can someone who sees the dress as black and blue (on the original image ) try to explain to me what leads their brain to believe that the light source is blasting the dress?
To me, background seem to be very bright, and also the clothes that are just behind the dress seems to be illuminated, thus leading my brain to think that the dress is in front of the light source (dress would be in the shade), so the logic that the dress color looks altered due to bright light just doesn’t compute in my brain.
I’m betting that this is not how dress would look in real life and that crappy camera has a lot to do with how that image turned out.
But I will never understand how people can look at it and say that it’s black and blue, because I never managed to see it as such.Your screen on your phone is RGB. Red Green Blue pixels. There is no yellow light ever being sent to your eyes. So if you were to look at a yellow square on your phone the pixels are RGB in a mix convincing your brain it is yellow.
So when you get a blue dress with warm yellow light, the pixels on your phone tries to convey that bit of yellow
Different devices will show it more or less.
If you printed out the picture there would be no illusion.
If you printed out the picture there would be no illusion.
Why would this be true?
They’re saying screens use RGB which has no yellow, directly.
Printing uses CMYK which can print yellow, directly.
I mean even then it depends on the lighting in the room. If you have LED lightbulbs there is still no “actually yellow” light.
Also your eyes don’t care.
A printed version of the picture will still maintain the illusion. I’ve actually seen a variant of this illusion printed in a book before.
Light bounces. If there’s a white/light coloured or reflective surface behind the camera, it will bounce the colour of the ambient light onto the dress, especially as overexposed as the photo is. What confuses me is where people who see the dress as white think the blue tint is coming from. Shadows don’t work like that.
I’m also in team gold and white. Just like you, my brain perceived the source of light is from the back and part of the dress that I saw is shaded.
What helped me see the dress as black and blue is trying to imagine a zoomed out image of this photo where the dress in uncropped, then force myself to believe that it is a brightly lit clothing shop. Also I tried to see the background as a mirror that reflect the light, so my brain can finally process that the lighting is not exclusively from behind the dress.
You just made me manage to see it in black and blue! Wow! Never spent too much time on it but always saw it gold+white.
I can see the dark detail lines on the bottom of the dress really easy on the right but I can hardly see them at all on the left
The mask overlaying the blue/black dress is lightening the color, causing the faint lines to become fainter, whereas the color is darkened on the masked area on the right, making the lines more distinct.
this is like saying that “2+5 = 5+2” is a “mathematical illusion”
Goddam! Thank you!
That kind of explains the gold or black dress!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
I can for the life of me only see it as white and gold, and I have really struggled trying to understand how others can see it as blue and black? I bet the picture you show here is a result of the research the picture of the dress initiated. It can’t be a coincidence that the illusion you posted also is made with dresses.
tilt your phone until almost parallel to ground and look at it from eye level
I tried, it doesn’t make the slightest difference. But thanks anyway.
this does it for me but I guess depends on the phone screen
It’s such a strange thing. For most of the illusions I can trick my brain to perceive both variants. This one is clearly black and blue. I can see that the black parts isolated can appear golden in the light, but for the life of me I can’t see it any other than blue. Brains are weird.
I wonder how much of this depended on the differences in device screens. In 2015 there was a lot more variability in display technology, lower resolutions in general and worse color fidelity. OLED was uncommon and expensive, you probably only had an IPS display if you worked in graphic arts, and a lot of people were still using standard LCD monitors backlit with fluorescent tubes, which meant that the black depth was limited and the detail in dark regions of an image was frequently not visible on the screen.
Just looked up the origonal dress pic on my pixel 8 pro. Its still white and gold to me. I’ve only ever seen it as black and blue (without aid) a handful of times since the day it went viral. In sure screens could influence this, but this damn thing stands as a powerful illusion on its own.
I remember showing a woman at work it, from my phone. She saw it as the opposite to me and another coworker. Me and the other coworker were stunned.
In the drawing, the surrounding background and the hard black lines on the lighter version are probably causing that we don’t compensate the light in the same way in both drawings. We are not given the same picture like it happened with the original photo.
Brains are weird.
Yes and they are extremely flawed too.
The only reason we think we are smart, is that every other life-form we know of is even stupider.To be fair, we’re the ones who makes the definition and therefore can make them fit our, in many cases, fragile ego. We’re only the most intelligent animal because our definition of intelligence is based on our self.
True, luckily many modern researchers are less biased. A lot of the bias is from religions, that claim that humans are special.
From modern research we now know that we are not special in many many aspects. Apart from being a bit more intelligent, we are clearly the same in more ways than we are different.
I don’t understand why people are arguing about a terrible picture. The colours are blown out. So you could misinterpret them as badly lit white and gold.
Were arguing. This happened about 10 years ago, so keep the quality and variance of computer monitors at the time in mind. That, and the average person doesn’t know what color balance/contrast is. Plenty of people don’t even realize that the same image can look different on two different monitors.
The original dress really was white. And for the record, I was team blue.
Apparently this is the same dress, the colour balance of the one on the left is just that fucked up.
This is the one. People made some color edits to make it more obvious too. That being said I’m still suspicious of anyone who looks at the left picture and can only see black and blue… No way José. I can’t convince my brain to see it even when I know it’s there.
I can’t understand anyone who can look at the left dress and think that it’s a dark picture in the shadows.
All the “explanations” basically say the same thing. Those dress shades appear to be white/gold in the context of a dark or dimly lit room.
Which the photo clearly is not. It’s so damn bright the entire background is washed out, and light is even spilling over from the background over the dress.
I know the explanation very well but none of it can me make it see black and blue. It simply does not look black and blue to me no matter how much context I have. Believe me, I’ve watched videos dissecting it back when it went viral. None of the context can rewire my brain here and I’m not alone with this one.
I guess it depends. Are people looking at the left image and going “Yep, that is definitely a dark black and navy blue”? Using a colour picker, the darker areas show up as somewhere around #7a6642, which definitely isn’t the black #231e16 we see on the right. Same with the lighter spots: we’re seeing something around #8596bb, which again isn’t the navy blue of #3a45c3
Quite simply, I cannot make the dress in the left image look like the dress in the right, even if the dress in those images are supposed to be identical.
According to the other comment replying to me, apparently some people see the picture and instinctively think “black and blue” because the background is bright. I can’t see it and never will.
Wikipedia says the original dress was blue/black.
Reread the wiki page about it. The dress was black and blue.
Wait. For real? I WAS RIGHT?! I was under the impression that I saw it wrong.
Perception is an element of intelligence, and a fundamental part of consciousness.
I’ll never understand how anyone can possibly see white and gold. You can literally see untinted yellow in the rest of the shop. If the dress was behind some heavy blue filter then how could the rest of the shop be such an overexposed yellow?
You can literally see untinted yellow in the rest of the shop
It’s in a shop? It looks like massively blown out bright sunlight looking out through a doorway. I literally cannot comprehend the idea that anyone actually sees it as blue and black. And I’ve always been pretty good at being able to flip my brain to see either interpretation of other optical (and auditory) illusions.
Even if it was looking outside, sunlight is white. If the color temperature was so off that the sensor recorded white as blue, then sunlight would appear blue as well
Maybe this version with a minor correction to color temperature will help
Because the image is gold and a shade of blue that you can get from white if your white balance is bad enough.
But if the white balance was that far off, then the rest of the store wouldn’t be that shade of yellow
It was only after following elaborate instructions: change the brightness, squint, and cover up this section of the image, that I was finally able to see a white dress.
As stupid as it was, it was a pretty cool accidental worldwide psych experiment.
The dress was revealed to be, in fact, blue and black.
Anyone with eyes and half a brain would know from the original photo 10 years ago it was black and blue. You can see the severity of the contrast in the photo that would suggest the colour was manipulated.
I still cannot believe this many years later there are still people so absolutely disillusioned that they see “White and Yellow”.
Get your eyes checked, people.
Yes that’s kind of part of the link I gave.
But if you take a color picker, you can clearly see the RGB values from the image to match white and gold.I did the color pocket thing too, and its result was blue and orange. Not super helpful to this particular global controversy, but was worth a shot.
IMO the color of the actual physical dress is kinda moot: photographed (poorly), digitized, and presented to the world on billions of screens with completely different settings for things like color saturation, and the color of the thing that hits our eyes is not necessarily indicative of the color of the original.
The color of the dress in the photo was not the same as the color of the photographed dress.
It was white and gold! sprints away
😋
On 28 February 2015, Roman Originals announced that they would make a single white and gold dress for a Comic Relief charity auction.[31]
Oh man, MAJOR missed opportunity there! They sold out of the blue and black ones like overnight, they should have fast-tracked a white and gold version production to hit the shelves ASAP and enjoyed the flood of purchases.
Huh, I checked the talk page out, turns out the guy behind the picture was jailed for trying to kill his wife.
when I clicker the link I saw it as black and blue for a split second but all I see now is golden and white 😭😭😭😭
My issue with this illustration vs “the dress” is that in the dress, the background is bright, not a darker blue.
In theory, this illustration just serves to show that nobody should be seeing “the dress” as white and gold. Thy do, and that breaks my brain, but I still feel that there is no logical way for that to be justified (and yes, I read all the research).
To my brain, it could only be white & gold (in reality I mean) if it was in drastic shadow. I iust imagine it not in drastic shadow and it looks blue & black.
This is what finally helped me see black and blue:
That has both interpretations, but it didn’t help. I’ve never been able to see white and gold.
So, in the video, when you looked at this:
You saw a dark black and a navy blue? Or is it only in the context of the full image that you’re seeing it as dark black and navy blue?
I see it as obviously black and blue, but i think the idea that anyone sees navy blue is a misconception and leads to much of the confusion. What i instinctively interpret it as is something closer to sky coloured, but clearly blue.
The black is a bit different because it’s very clearly showing up as golden to the camera, but 1) it would be a very fucking ugly colour of lacing, 2) the photo is clearly taken in strongly coloured bright lighting so it’s pretty obviously not the colour it looks like, and 3) it’s a pretty safe assumption that any dark lacing is just pitch black.
This is basically what i intuitively interpret it as looking like in more normal lighting:
Correct interpretation: blue and black in an overexposed image
Misinterpretation: yellow and gold in an underexposed image.
The area of the picture that isn’t the dress is washed out in white and the overexposure is even bleeding over top right corner.
Anyone misinterpreting must either be bad with visual context or not understand photography.
Delta P
This kills the crab.
I don’t even understand the point of this. I see a black dress with a blue apron and a yellow dress with a white apron. Is that wrong?
The blue and the yellow are the same color (cover up the rest of the picture, there is no gradient in the bar). Same thing for the white and the blue, isn’t that strange?
No, when I cover up different areas I see black and blue or yellow and white.
The top and bottom are still uncovered so the illusion is still operative.
Let me be more clear - I cover the ENTIRE IMAGE except for like an inch opening, and it’s still eiher black/blue or yellow/white. I can otherwise see the whole color spectrum quite well, so I dunno what’s going on but that’s how it is. Not a big deal though, I read up on the original dress thing and my curiosity is satisfied, but thanks for replying.
No, you’re absolutely right.
These people either have some medical condition they need to see an optometrist for, or are literally just trolling.
No I was looking at the wrong areas. To me the tan area between the lines looks darker on the left (next to the black) and lighter on the right, next to the yellow. Ok, but I don’t get how this is supposed to explain why people thought a blue and black dress was white and yellow. Doesn’t matter tho.
It’s essentially highlighting the ambiguity the colors can convey. Because our eyes don’t see in isolation from our brains, we don’t see based on the actual reflected color, but based on the contrast between those colors and context clues. We essentially have white balance and color correction baked into our vision,which is part of why photos without that look weird. Lacking context you process the colors differently.
In this case people saw a blue and black dress and lacking visual context they either compensated for sunlight or the compensated for shade. The contrasts involved (black/white, blue/yellow) are because opposite compensations maintain contrast while changing brightness.
This image has someone wearing the dress photographed with the white balance specifically off so that you can maybe see what other people were implicitly correcting for.
What do you think the image is trying to show?
You’re clearly supposed to see the two dresses as different colors. The actual illusions are the rectangles. They even have lines between them so you can see the color doesn’t change, yet one apron looks white and one looks blue.
Turn your phone horizontal (with locked orientation), now put one finger from your left hand and one finger from your right hand to the areas above outside the boxes.
Voilà! The boxed areas are the same.
Ohh, the boxed areas. Okay, I see that the boxed tan color looks darker next to black and lighter next to yellow. I’m not seeing this effect on the boxed bluish color. I thought the point was to show why some people thought the original black and blue dress was white and gold. That’s okay, doesn’t matter.
