What color is this dress??? (the interwebs are asploding)......

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Daedalus685

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2009
1,386
1
0
There is no illusion.

It is a blue/black dress photographed with a shit camera, which makes it appear white/gold.

Those are facts. They are not up for interpretation. We know what the dress actually looks like, and we know it is extremely strange for a picture to be so terrible as to:

-wash out a deep blue until it appears off-white. Yes, the color is still technically a shade of 'blue,' but anyone who's used Photoshop a bit will tell you that pictures of white things often end up with a very similar blue tinge.

-magically turn black into gold. This is an even greater accomplishment in technology terribleness, really, but I suspect there are one or two extra elements at play: the top of the dress is see-through, allowing sunlight to seep through, and the rest of the fabric may may be of the kinda-shiny satin variety, reflecting light in a way that would not be expected from black.

...but it did. I guess the question is just whether your brain sees what is literally there, or whether it tries to do detective work, unbeknownst to its own, and extrapolate the original colors of the dress.

Now, the people who flip-flop back and forth and swear the picture is being changed out on them: you're just crazy.

I posted the exact illusion...

It is a bad picture and bad lighting. But that is the whole illusion, that is what causes the illusion. It is not a magic dress. The picture is just shot in such a way as to cause some people to interpret the colours 'wrong'.

Semantics I suppose. you can say 'those people are wrong'. Which they factually are, it is a blue and black dress. I call it an illusion because by manipulating context intentionally, illusions can be made to 'fool' a lot more than just some people.

I assure you, the photo appears intensely blue and black to a lot of people, the illusion does not work for everyone. I have not managed to get it to appear white to me yet, give it a few days of time wasting and we'll see.
 

Arcadio

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2007
5,637
24
81
There is no illusion.

It is a blue/black dress photographed with a shit camera, which makes it appear white/gold.

No. Sorry. There is an illusion. The people (including myself) who see white/gold actually perceive the colors as white/gold. It's not a thing of "kind of whitish/goldish coloration." No. We see it as actual white and gold.

I was able to switch back to blue and black a few minutes later and now all I see is black and blue. They look like two totally different dresses. I think this deserves the attention that is getting because it makes the masses aware that their brain perceives things that might not be there. Interesting from a psychological point of view.

Some more info
 
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HN

Diamond Member
Jan 19, 2001
8,186
4
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To the people who see the bands on the dress as black, do they look like the same black that's on the cow print on the adjacent lower left?

yep. to me looks more blackish like the cow on the left than yellow/gold (which is what i'd say the flooring(?) on the lower right looks like).
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,484
8,345
126
To the people who see the bands on the dress as black, do they look like the same black that's on the cow print on the adjacent lower left?

Cow print is a bit deeper black than the bands on the dress. The dress just looks like an overexposed picture. It's just washed out colors.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,852
33,912
136
To the people who see the bands on the dress as black, do they look like the same black that's on the cow print on the adjacent lower left?
To me the lower "black" stripes have a bit of blue in them, likely from jpeg compression smearing. Otherwise, a less pure black, more charcoal than true black. The cows are a more even, darker charcoal.
 

clamum

Lifer
Feb 13, 2003
26,256
406
126
I thought it was totally blue and black when I first heard of it. The pictures I saw from several different news articles all showed obvious blue and black so I honestly thought this whole thing was because people were just joking/trolling that it was white and gold.

Then this morning I saw some pictures that looked light blue and gold. LOL. What a news story.
 

JTsyo

Lifer
Nov 18, 2007
12,033
1,132
126
Still waiting to hear responses about the color of the dresses in the lower left of the picture. Very clearly black with white, although the white looks yellow-ish because of the shitty picture.

I've tried manipulating displays and it still shows up as blue and dark brown/grey to me.



What real colors? The dress is actually blue with some dark sorta lacy accent. Those are the actual colors of the fabric used for the dress.

Yup, here's the dress.
 

ioni

Senior member
Aug 3, 2009
619
11
81
I found the answer to this phenomenon.

Your brain interprets color based on CONTEXT and its past experience. If you see an apple in the dark, you interpret it as 'red' although 'scientific color value' is not red at all.

At a first glance....

If your brain interprets the picture as 'overexposed', then you see it as White & Gold based on that context.

If your brain interprets the picture as is, then you see it as Blue & White.


/thread.

What's hilarious for me is that I can't see it as White & Gold whatsoever. It's so plainly Blue & White.

How are people seeing any white? Even a white dress with a blue light on the dress wouldn't be that blue. I can understand seeing black and blue at a quick glance. But a few extra seconds looking closely at the pic, anyone should be able to clearly see a brownish gold and blue dress. The most bizarre thing about this even being a question is that anyone can easily download the pic, open it in paint, and use the eye dropper to get the RGB values of the colors.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,852
33,912
136
the plane will not take off!

/me takes his color blind ass out of this thread
rudeguy.gif
 

Stopsignhank

Platinum Member
Mar 1, 2014
2,751
2,250
136
I see it as white gold.
I printed the picture of the dress
I still see it as white gold.

Those of you who see it as blue, can you print it and tell us what you see?
 
Oct 16, 1999
10,490
4
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Well I was only seeing white/gold at first, but going back between the cow print and the dress got my brain to flip it to blue/black. I thought the people who were seeing blue/black were crazy but there it is now.
 

Arcadio

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2007
5,637
24
81
How are people seeing any white? Even a white dress with a blue light on the dress wouldn't be that blue. The most bizarre thing about this even being a question is that anyone can easily download the pic, open it in paint, and use the eye dropper to get the RGB values of the colors.

It's been mentioned before: there is no debate that the colors are black and blue. But some people's brains perceive the colors as white and gold because of the lightning assumptions made by the brain when looking at the picture.
 
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mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
17,501
12
0
It's funny seeing people convinced that the dress is either blue/black or white/gold and basically thinking that anyone who doesn't see it their way is basically blind/stupid. Arrogance at its best.

Science bitches!

Here's the colour values for the strip at the top of the dress people say is gold.
43Iyo1V.jpg


And here's the part immediately below it that people are saying is white.
oNMxW1e.jpg


Pretty hard to argue with that, as those are the colour values the camera interpreted. It definitely looks like it was shot with a fridge though.

I think what's confusing things is the white balance setting, as I said earlier. Looks like it may be in an environment where there's halogen lights (background) mixed with fluorescent (foreground). AWB is grabbing the background, so that gives the white in the foreground a blueish tinge.

So what we can do is fix that in GIMP by telling the computer what white is. Notice how yellow the background now is? Clear indication of a poor white balance.

bXaD95x.jpg


Here's a neat trick to make the dress look black and blue by black balancing the image. I'm telling the computer the gold part is actually black.

poPToJO.jpg


As to why people are seeing the unedited image like that, I can't really say.

Also, what's black and blue and white and gold?

A pimp in a white suit backhanding a John.
 

Daedalus685

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2009
1,386
1
0
How are people seeing any white? Even a white dress with a blue light on the dress wouldn't be that blue. The most bizarre thing about this even being a question is that anyone can easily download the pic, open it in paint, and use the eye dropper to get the RGB values of the colors.

The 'true colour' (from paint or whatever) doesn't really matter. That is the fun.

Some folks minds are interpreting that colour as being from the surroundings, the illumination, the shadowing. Thus they are ignoring it when the image is presented to the conscious mind. It appears white to them, they are unable to recognise that there is any blue because it is being filtered it out as 'pointless information' unconsciously.

Fringe situations like this very rarely happen, most optical illusions you see in books are specifically designed to fool everyone. There is very rarely any debate when you see them. Just, "oh that is really neat that those are actually that". This seems to only work on some people, hense the debate.
 

Daedalus685

Golden Member
Nov 12, 2009
1,386
1
0
Well I was only seeing white/gold at first, but going back between the cow print and the dress got my brain to flip it to blue/black. I thought the people who were seeing blue/black were crazy but there it is now.

Isn't it soo cool?

I know I'm a dweeb. The guy with the magic eyes on his wall at work. I'm sad that it didin't work on me. I love the WOW moments when illusions flip.

It almost never happens that stuff like this hits the limelight. I look forward to more professionally done illusions because of the publicity.

There are about 0 times in my life when having a physics/optics degree has been relevant to popular culture. This is fun.
 
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Arcadio

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2007
5,637
24
81
Isn't it soo cool?

I know I'm a dweeb. The guy with the magic eyes on his wall at work. I'm sad that it didin't work on me. I love the WOW moments when illusions flip.

It almost never happens that stuff like this hits the limelight. I look forward to more professionally done illusions because of the publicity.

I left the original picture on my monitor this morning when the dress looked blue and black. Went to make some coffee and my jaw dropped when I came back and saw a white and gold dress! I seriously thought it was an internet prank.
 

Alienwho

Diamond Member
Apr 22, 2001
6,766
0
76
So I saw this dress on my tablet at home this morning and it was gold and white, no brainer. Now at work it's black and blue.
 

cronos

Diamond Member
Nov 7, 2001
9,380
26
101
Yeah, the actual color of the dress is not in question. The dress is most definitely blue-black.

That picture that's being discussed however is straight up white-gold dress to me. I just don't know how to see it differently. When I changed stuff around (brightness, viewing angle, etc) the white sometimes appeared to have a really light transparent purple hue on it, but the gold is just gold no matter what. I could never see it as black.

My wife is the opposite. She sees it as straight up blue-black no matter what.