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I’m still convinced this is the biggest troll. It’s clearly white and gold
You can literally sample the rgb values and see it’s blue and black
Edit: am I part of the joke here??? It’s clearly blue and black…
am I part of the joke here??? It’s clearly blue and black…
The objective fact is…it is a blue and black dress. Other photos of the same dress show that.
But I cannot, for the life of me, see how anyone can possibly get that from this photo. Sample the RGB values all you want and it clearly is not black in this photo. The exposure and white balance have messed around with it so much it is incomprehensible to me how anyone can see it as blue and black.
“The phenomenon revealed difference in human color perception…”
Yes, you’re becoming a part of the joke. People LITERALLY see the dress differently. It doesn’t matter what the objective facts are. TBH, it says a lot about humanity. Even when we have evidence that subjective experiences can vary, and even contradict each other, we still end up arguing over whose viewpoint is “correct”.
The lighting of the room is clearly yellow. The black stripes look to be a very glossy material, which when lit with yellow light reflects goldish. There’s no way that lighting turns a white dress blue.
The lighting of the room is clearly yellow.
That’s not clear to me. The dress looks like it’s in the shade.
Look at everything to the right of the dress, even to the left. Everything is illuminated with bright, yellowish light.
See, it always looked to me like blue light (or maybe shadow) around the dress itself, where the only sense it makes to my brain is that the fabric is white.
Whatever is to the right and behind the dress is definitely in bright yellow light.
Behind the dress, yes. No one’s disputing that. The difference between that bright light and the dress itself makes it look like it’s in shadow, at least to some of us.
Yes, and a room with that kind of lighting wouldn’t make a white dress look blue. Just the radiant light from those surroundings proves that it can’t be in that kind of shadow.
What room? It looks like we’re looking at the back of an object that’s facing out into bright sunlight.
Whatever the setting is, it appears to be bathed in bright sunlight. That’s the important part.
The front of it presumably is. But the back, that we’re looking at, seems to be in shade.
Light bounces around. That’s the whole point of ray tracing. Even if the dress were not in direct light, the light bouncing around the environment would prevent the kind of shade necessary for that.
I dunno. It’s clearly a blue and black dress in a washed-out photo.
I guess I’m just used to seeing washed-out photos, and mentally adjusting the “whitepoint/exposure” (I’m not a photographer) in my brain or whatever.
I have washed out Polaroids from my childhood, so. I don’t think there’s any great mystery here.
If you tilt the photo around on your phone you can start to see it turn black and blue. IIRC it’s because the phenomenon depends on the angle viewed at
You’re good. It’s black and blue. At a pinch, maybe blue and black.
Where the hell is the black supposed to be? Nothing is that dark here. I can easily accept blue, white, or gold, but there’s clearly no black.
You can literally sample the rgb values
It doesn’t matter. This phenomenon can be explained by something called color constancy.
I remember some versions of this image where I could literally switch between perceptions at will, when I imagined different surrounding light temperatures/environments.
It’s a subjective perception.
What is global illumination from sky lighting again ??
It’s very clearly white and gold.
Color is created in the brain, not in the pixel values. Pixel values often have no correlation to the color that’s produced in the brain.
I’ve always really liked this explanation image you can find on Wikipedia page for it. Essentially, people who see white and gold are mistaking the lighting to be cold and blue-tinted, rather than warm and yellow-tinted.
The portions inside the boxes are the exact same colors, you can easily check this with a color picker.
As in using the colour picker on the image and finding the corresponding code? That’s actually an explanation that I can get behind. Classic example of trust your instrument.
I see the dress as gold and white, no matter ehow hard I try to see the other side of the coin.
Yup. Really you don’t even need the color picker, as the two horizontal bars seamlessly connecting the two dresses are there to show the same thing.
I think the most fascinating thing about this example image is that I can trick myself into thinking the dress on the left is gold and white. By zooming all the way in so that I can only see the black portion of the dress inside the box and then squinting, it begins to look gold to me. Then scrolling up slowly, the blue portion comes into frame and looks white. It isn’t until I zoom out that the illusion is broken.
I was once able to see the original image as black and blue (though I haven’t managed it today unfortunately), and its baffling how large of a difference it is. You’d think its like some bright sky blue or something, but no, its a deep blue like in the image I sent and our eyes are laughing at us.
Nope. Color cannot be measured, it is created in the brain. Pickers show pixel values (stimulus) and often don’t correlate to the experienced color.
But you could use one I think, and then have that colour isolated and then dump it somewhere
You cannot measure perception with a color picker. Eyes + brain is not a measurement instrument.
Just like you cannot measure amount of salt used in a dish with your tongue.
Ah, so white and gold folks are, indeed, mistaken.
Thanks!
This has been known for almost as long as the picture has been around. Still doesn’t allow me to see it.
Incorrect. It is impossible to deduce the “real” color from the photo, both sets are true.
The photo is simply bistable.
You can argue that “the real dress bla bla bla”, but nobody’s looking at the real dress and everyone’s looking at the photo.
Very interesting. I wonder how big the effect of culture is on how people perceive this situation
If theyre the same color, why can i see the black outlines way clearer in the yellow dress w/ blue tint side ?
That would be because the outlines themselves are not the same colors, just the blue/white and black/yellow sections. Here’s an image I quickly edited with the outlines and skin removed, so you can see just how much an effect they have on the image. Both dresses still look normal, but they no longer look like completely different colors when compared together this way.
(edit): And here’s the same image with the outer boxes removed, to show how much the lighting is affecting things, where one of the dresses just looks completely wrong to me now.
I never understood this concept until you made the outlines the same. That’s the tip i needed to get over the edge. Thanks!
I feel so dumb, you did such good work on this and… OK maybe I’ll just take another look in the morning and it’ll make sense
lol I prob need those images described cuz for some reason…. I don’t even really know what I’m looking at heh… I’m not this dumb on other topics
The two boxes are meant to be different types of lighting. The box on the left is a warmer, yellow lighting while the box on the right is a colder, blue lighting, which you can tell from its effect on the grey background. The portions of the dresses inside of this “lighting” are the exact same colors, which I tried to help demonstrate with the second picture. The portions of the dresses outside of the “lighting” represent their real color without any lighting affecting them.
The point of the image is just to show how two different colored dresses could look exactly the same depending on the lighting. At the same time, the real dress from the original image is seen as different colors by different people because brains are weird and they interpret the lighting differently.
Some people see a gold and white dress in a blue-tinted light like they’re in the shade, while others see a black and blue dress that is overexposed by a bright yellow-tinted light.
You are wonderful!
A couple very helpful things you said:
Its effect on the gray background plus different color dresses can look the same based on lighting. (lol the second point is childishly basic but yeah it helped)
Going to show this to a friend and see if I can’t just deepen my understanding a bit more. Thank you [king][queen][royal] Lemming
Edit: r u a scientist? Well, I mean “classically trained” in that field/industry? Cuz obvy ur citizen scientist AND EDUCATOR 🫡
But the dress in the photo looks like it’s in the shadow so it’s a fair assumption that the lighting would be blue-tinted.
How does it look like it’s in a shadow? The rest of the photo is over exposed like in bright lights so it’s safe to assume that the dress is over exposed too.
I wonder if could be an age component, too? Artificial lighting used to be a lot more yellow. “Party” lighting tends to be more blue.
What the actual fuck? When this first came around, my eyes saw white and gold, in this post it looks like overexposed brown and blue, and looking at this graphic is fucking with my head! Brains are wee photo editors, aren’t they?
I don’t understand this, can you explain it?
In the left I see a black and blue dress with a yellow box. The dress inside the box is still black and blue (with yellow tint).
In the right side I see a white and gold dress with a blue. box. Inside the box the dress is white and gold, with a blue tint.
What am i supposed to see here? What is this telling me?
The dress inside the [left] box is still black and blue (with yellow tint). Inside the [right] box the dress is white and gold, with a blue tint.
The black and yellow colors inside the boxes are actually the exact same color, and the same goes for the blue and white colors inside the boxes (which is what the seamless bars connecting them is there to demonstrate). But they look completely different, right? The picture is showing us two different ways the exact same colors can be interpreted differently depending on the context surrounding it.
If you go to my profile and look at my comment before this one, I posted two slightly edited versions of the image that better show how they’re the exact same color.
The way this connects to the original image of the dress, is that some people see a gold and white dress because they think the dress is in blue-tinted lighting, as though they were standing in shade. People who see an overexposed image with a bright yellow tint, on the other hand, will likely see a blue and black dress. I couldn’t tell you why it happens, but it’s the way our brains perceive the lighting that’s doing it.
Stop trolling me. It’s blue and black. I could never figure how people might perceive it otherwise.
Same, I always assume the ppl. Saying it’s black and blue are trolling me.
I can see both so I promise you it’s not a troll, but it is a wild phenomenon.
When the discussion started, I saw white and gold too. Then, at some point, I saw blue and black and since then I’ve never been able to see it as white and gold again.
And you are obviously right. I can see it with my own eyes.
Then you clearly have a brain/eye defect because not only does it look black and blue, but the actual dress in real life is black and blue.
Because no one has posted the other photos:
And this is a photo of the same dress taken under proper lighting:
No way, really ? I really thought it was always white and gold. This cannot be the same dress, I do not trust my eyes anymore
The second photo is supposed to be the same dress? Looks like an homage, aka knock-off attempt to me. What happened to the shoulders?
I’ll double-check the source of the second photo, but it looks like the original picture is taken from the back and the second is taken from the front.
Add: Yeah, it’s not the EXACT SAME dress worn to the wedding where the original picture came from, but it is the same design by the same maker.
…Also, THIS is the source the second photo came from and today I learned that the dress actually did drive people insane! Holy fuck! 😭
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/man-whose-mother-law-wore-225725928.html
Some people said the dress was black and blue while others argued it was white and gold. The court heard the couple had a “volatile” relationship and Johnston became enraged with his wife at their home during an argument. He then tackled her to the ground and throttled her using both hands. […] He threatend to “finish her off”, struggled with his wife again, brandished a knife, uttered a further threat that “somebody was going to die” and then attempted to self-harm, the court heard. He pleaded guilty at the same court last month to assaulting his wife to her injury and endangering her life. […] They went on to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres Show in the USA, where they were handed $10,000 and a luxury trip to Grenada.
Man behind viral #TheDress photo jailed for attacking wife
Damn. Sentenced to 4½ years.
Doesn’t look like the shoulder material is physically part of the dress… it’s probably a jacket or shaul.
All three of these look blue and black just with different levels of saturation?? I can understand how people can maybe see the gold, but interpreting the blue as white is baffling to me. Bluer than the day sky.
I have always only seen black and blue, even in the light version my brain doesn’t make it gold and white. It’s strange to me why people perceive this as gold.
Edit this video was the only one to make me see it https://youtu.be/YB36n00NHBw
We’ll I watched the other video and I finally saw the blue and black. I’ve always seen white gold but now I don’t. Fucking trippy.
Left: blue and black.
Middle: light blue and black.
Right: dark blue and black.The dress is blue and black. It will never be white or gold. The lighting or saturation doesn’t matter.
For your information : the dress is really blue and black, according to the store and manufacturer. The vast majority of people see it as white and gold, but I personally think most people are not used to decrypting overexposed pictures, hence their inability to perceive the right colors.
not used to decrypting overexposed pictures
I used to see it black and blue, now I see it white and gold.
+ I do photography and often have to work with overexposed pictures
Edit: just looked at it again now its black and blue. Wtf brain
overexposure is not the issue but improper white balance, the camera was probably set for ~6800K but the lighting in the room was ~2700K
I’ve never seen it at white and gold. Even the brightened photo, while I understand what’s happening to make people see white and gold, is still blueish/purple and black to me. Does that mean I have a tumor?
So closed minded smh
Hey, I have friends who are white and gold… I’ve worked with white and golds.
Wow you figured out how to break JPG encryption? Someone call Alan Turing, we got a prodigy over here
I’m French, we often use comparable actions verbs even if it’s not their real context. More commonly known as the metaphore stylistic device.
I’m not French, we also do it, it’s commonly done and you were completely legible. Dude needs to chill
Is it common for the French to put together random semi-related, mostly nonsense words to try and sound like you know what you’re talking about?
I have not enjoyed passing through your comments in this thread
No need to be so sassy c’mon
Being sassy is fine, but being sassy and incorrect makes you look silly.
Just calling em like I see em, but fine. Carry on with the nonsense
I was gonna let you be stupid without saying anything, but you doubled down twice so now I will prove that you are wrong.
The first definition of decrypt in the American Heritage Dictionary is “To Decipher” I’ll admit, not super helpful, so let’s look at the definition of decipher. “To read or interpret (ambiguous, obscure, or illegible matter)”
So for someone to “decrypt” an overexposed picture, they would be, by dictionary definition, trying to interpret what the ambiguous picture was actually showing, since the lighting was making it unclear.
You are in the wrong when saying they used the wrong word, you just don’t have as good a command over the English language as you thought
Do you see em as white and gold?
Sounds like you need to open a dictionary ! It’s one of those big, stern books. Books are those stacks of paper bound together on one side.
Decrypt is closely related to the word “interpret”, which is something I personally interpreted from a history of decrypting English text written by nonnative speakers on the internet. 👍
The same words often have different meanings in different countries; something you should take into account in case you ever decide to take a German gift from a slim Dutchman.
“Decipher” is a mostly synonymous word which is more commonly used in that context.
It appears white/gold to me on it’s own, I’ve never been able to see anything different.
Grabbing this specific image and sampling the colours though; they appear more of a grey/brown colour. I can sorta maybe understand blue, but definitely not black.
This is just using Polish photo editor on android:
This is exactly the thing.
Whatever the dress may be in reality, the photo of it that was circulated was either exposed or twiddled with such that the pixels it’s made of are indeed slightly bluish grey trending towards white (i.e. above 50% grey) and tanish browny gold.
That is absolutely not up for debate. Those are the color values of those pixels, end of discussion.
Edit to add: This entire debacle is a fascinating case of people either failing to or refusing to separate the concept of a physical object versus its very inaccurate representation. The photograph of the object is not the object: ce n’est pas une robe.
The people going around in this thread and elsewhere putting people down and calling them “stupid” or whatever else only because they know that the physical dress itself is black and blue based on external information are studiously ignoring the fact that this is not what the photograph of it shows. That’s because the photograph is extremely cooked and is not an accurate depiction. The debate only exists at all if one party or the other does not have the complete set of information, and at this point in history now that this stupid meme has been driven into the ground quite thoroughly I should hope that all of us do.
It’s true that our brains can and will interpret false color data based on either context or surrounding contrast, and it’s possible that somebody deliberately messed with the original image to amplify this effect in the first place. But the fact remains that arguing about what the dress is versus how it’s been inaccurately depicted is stupid, and anyone still trying that at this late stage is probably doing so in bad faith.
The “white” pixels are literally blue. The “black” ones can be considered gold due to the lighting.
You missed the whole point. If I take a white dress and then shine a blue lamp on it, then take a photo.The pixels will be 100% blue, but would that mean the dress itself is blue?
But you can clearly see that the lighting is bright yellow-white, not blue…
The yellow background could be lit by another window or a different light source, so one could argue we don’t have a good reference to tell. But the point is that the “picture of a thing” is not “the thing” itself, and there is always a possibility that they are different.
If I showed you a picture of a green surface, and asked you what color it is, would you say that it’s white and that there’s probably green light shining on it?
No, but it doesn’t mean the other answer is invalid too. If there is no reference in the picture to tell what kind of light condition it was shot at, both answers could be possible.
So if we’re just going by what’s possible then the wall could be yellow and have a blue light, or it could be white with one yellow and one blue light.
That’s… literally not what this phenominon is about, either. Talk about missing the point.
That is literally what the argument is caused by, adaptive perception to lighting conditions.
That’s less than half of the related concepts.
It’s exactly the point. White fabric will appear blue in blue light, which is why some people see this white dress and think it’s blue.
Earlier today I was sat in a dark room reading this thread, I looked at the picture above and it clearly had blue tones with warm dark grey. The dress was obviously blue/black.
I’m sitting outside in the light now, looking at the same picture on the same phone in the same app and now it’s white and gold/brown.
Without going on my pc and colour picking it myself I can’t tell what colour the picture really is since my eyes seem all to happy to lie to me about it.
They’re not stupid, their visual cortex just lacks the ability to calibrate to context. You can see in the picture that the scene is very brightly lit. If your visual cortex is in working order, you’ll adjust your perception of the colours. The picture reveals that some people struggle to do that.
Why not an American photo editor?
A) I’m not American
And
B) America can go fuck itself until it sorts out it’s Nazi problem. I still think Canada should enact a full trade embargo and take our business elsewhere.
I mean… it was a dumb joke on Polish and Polish being homographs, but okay.
Woops
I missed that; bit of a sensitive topic atm…
Why are people downvoting someone for admitting they made a mistake? It takes some courage to do that.
Probably because they qualified it by making an excuse for themself instead of just owning the error without ‘strings attached’.
Next up: the dress worn by the woman on the right.
It’s funny how people will keep barking about it even when you slap them in the face with color picker which is mathematical display of the color. There is no “how brain is seeing things”. It’s literally WHAT THE COLOR IS. To call white with faint blue tint “blue” and what is clearly a “gold” shade can’t possibly be black. If photo was heavily manipulated through photo editing or lighting, that doesn’t prove anything at all. Or the question was stupid. No one was really asking “what color is the dress”, they were asking what colors are on the photo. And photo has no relation to the real dress because of light conditions manipulation or even photo editing.
This is the color picker in the image you replied to. Do you really think the colors on the left are white and the colors on the right are gold?
This person doesn’t understand pixels lol. You picked one pixel. Pick 100 of them and average them. It’s in the white spectrum with a slight shade of blue hue. If you look at it on the color wheel, it’s well within white segment slightly towards the blue. When you zoom out of single pixels, it’s white that you get under cool white light. It’s still considered white.
As for gold, computer screens do not display gold in specular way how you see it with eyes.When you pick pixels, they will be in range of brown. Again, you don’t seem to underetand pixels. And ultimately, this is suppose to be black, remember? Where’s the black?
The “after” photos of a dress show dark blue with black lace details because it was not captured in bullshit lighting. Where is that on the picked pixels? Just like years ago we are once again arguing over bullshit doctored/manipulated/bad photo of a dress arguing what color it is. It’s beyond stupid and I can’t believe people are still this dumb to argue about colors that aren’t even there. I don’t care how dress actually looks, you showed me the photo of it and you’re asking me how the dress looks like on the photo, not in reality. The rest is within the color picker which is mathematical representation of colors that doesn’t give a shit how eyes work. And it picks very faint blue and brown (thats perceived by eyes as white and gold). Not dark blue and black.
You are absolutely right. How most people don’t seem to get this fact is beyond me.
No one was really asking “what color is the dress”, they were asking what colors are on the photo.
This is not my recollection of this at all. Everyone knows what physical colors are on the screen. If so people who see the image as white and gold wouldn’t have been shocked/angry to learn the dress is actually blue and black.
If they were asking about actual color of the dress that you cannot see, what the fuck is the point? That’s like saying, we put orange cat in fully closed box. What color is the cat? And you then claim it’s not orange, it’s black because there is no light inside the fully closed box so the cat is actually black. That’s the level of stupid argument with this stupid ass dress.
I can also shoot a white dress to look entirely blue because I’m gonna use cool white light at 9000 fucking Kelvins and fuck up the cameras white balance to make shit look anything but its actual color. I can also take a normal photo and then just drag some sliders in photo editor and fuck up colors and then ask some bullshit question about colors and then go like “well, achtually it’s not that color”.
It’s also funny when people argue it’s not actually white because color picker says it’s light blue. Firstly, color motherfucking temperature. Secondly, open color wheel and see where it’s positioned. It’s in the white segment mildly nudging towards blue. The part where I’m not gonna argue is perception of gradients. This isn’t “this gold color is actually black bullshit”, but actual science where people perceive correct colors differently. For someone a certain gradient of red is perceived as lighter or darker compared to someone else. But certainly isn’t perceived as green. Or black. Or whatever other basic color.
It’s also funny when people argue it’s not actually white because color picker says it’s light blue. Firstly, color motherfucking temperature.
It’s because it seems like about half of people’s eyes and brains correct it one way and the other half the other way, leading to extremely heated discussions about “how can you not see it my way.” This isn’t like other optical illusions like that silhouette of a spinning ballerina where you can easily flip it around in your mind. I’ve only ever seen this as white and gold once and it took someone putting it upside down and very slowly zooming out from a very specific area of the dress.
So that’s why people were so torn about it.
Don’t forget Laurel and Yani!
I like Brainstorm vs Green Needle even better. The’re not even the same amount of syllables! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1okD66RmktA
Ok this one is crazy, because I hear whatever I’m consciously thinking of. “Brainstorm”, “green needle”, “brain needle”, “green storm”. It’s actually tripping me out.
Btw I still hear “laurel” every time. I can hear “yanny” in the background if I really focus, but I always hear “laurel” as well.
Craziest one that’s worked on me seeing both. Only hear yanny, no concept of laurel
i hear Laurel at high volumes and Yanny at low volumes, and if i turn down/up the volume little by little i can hear the same one across all volumes ( brain resets after a few seconds of not listening)
Team Yanny
I always heard yarrel. Or yarrey, but I don’t hear l sound at the start or n sound in the middle. So neither?
Oh thank god, i thought i was insane for hearing yarrey
I hear pancaked!
And the trainer.
The dress was always blue and black to me (blue and copper tinged black really), but this one keeps switching from grey and mint to pink and white and then back again.
I hear both simultaneously at different frequency. Yanny is way higher.
I hate that one because I hear both of them at the same time Dx feels like pure insanity.
I’ve only ever seen it as blue and black. I can’t force it the other way like I could with Laurel and Yani. Y’all seeing white and gold astound me.
Crazy talk. White and gold only
I still think the white and gold people are trolling.
Same. But now after all these years, there are enough people in here that are pedants/trolls and flatly saying they can only see white and gold.
It makes me question my own abilities. Sure, I see the dress for what it actually is, but am I lacking the ability to trick my brain into seeing an illusion? Is that a lack of something like imagination? Am I broken?
I never really understood the debate. In reality, if you were standing in front of the dress it is black and blue. Now, if you take a digital photo of the dress and post it on the internet as a terribly compressed jpg, with weird white balancing, and brightness/contrast turned up and down it is gold and white. The debate isn’t really about the reality of the color of the dress but the reality of a badly edited photo.
It’s more about the colors around it. This image from Wikipedia does a really good job illustrating the effect.
Context is extremely important in identifying color. As Technology Connections tells us, for example, “brown is just orange with context.”
What always confused me is, the picture clearly seems to be overexposed, which means the blue/black interpretation should be obvious.
I agree. But my wife was so firmly in the white/gold camp that I had to find this (and a better image of the actual dress, which is indeed blue and black) to help us understand one another’s perspective.
And what everyone seemed to omit: the reality of peoples’ wildly uncalibrated monitors/phone screens.
if you take a digital photo of the [ … thing … ] and post it on the internet as a terribly compressed jpg
That sums up the entirety of the content on a number of popular subs on the R-word site.
Confusing perspective? No. More like confusing JPEG artifacts.
You used to be able to report shit for not being confusing, but it was placebo at best. That site sucks so much.
Is it, though? Is this dress in the pic only white and gold to everyone who looks at the picture/the original?
I can never see black and blue. I assume all those who claim to see black and blue are bots. fite me
So people looking at this photograph actually can perceive this to be white and gold? thats utterly wild. And hard to believe.
ffs now it looks blue and gold. am i dying?
it has always looked light blue-ish, like a periwinkle, and gold to me, as well
I only see white gold
It kills me that no matter what, it is always white and gold for me, EVEN THOUGH REALITY SAYS OTHERWISE!
Yea i never see an ounce of black on there. That’s fucking yellow.
I see blue stripes or white if standing in a shadow. But there is no black.
*yeah, not yea or nay. It isn’t a vote.
Brain defect.
Aren’t we all just one big brain defect?
whats next? are you gonna post who remembers yanny/laurel? bitch be fr
C’mon, it is clearly blue and black 😁
The actual dress was in fact blue and black.
those color illusions always wreck my brain
This literally clears up nothing for me and I’m about to lose it. It’s still fucking blue and black
The real dress is actually blue and black, yes, but the illustration tries to show how the exact same colours can look different depending on lighting and context.
In the diagram, the dress on the left is strongly blue and black, while the dress on the right is strongly white and yellow.
And yet the connected parts of the dresses with the “pipes” between them show the exact same colour on one dress can look like a different color on the other. The “pipe” is there so you can follow it with your own eyes from one side to the other and observe that it is indeed the same colour on both sides, despite looking very different when observed as part of the whole image.
The point being, how our brains perceive colour is very situationally dependent, and some people assume a different situation than others, hence the differences in perception.
People tend to believe that vision is absolute, that we all have the same eyes and see the same things, but that’s absolutely not true. The dress phenomenon occurred because It’s not about what your “eyes” see in absolute terms, it’s about what your “brain” does with that information.
another thing that makes it weird is the black lines for the folds of the fabric are much darker/defined on the “blue” side
if you’re in a room with yellow lighting, then the “black” actually looks black. but if the lighting in the room is blue, then the “black” looks yellow. it’s the different surrounding colors that makes one certain color look like 2 different colors
What finally worked for me on the image above is to look at the yellow dress on the image above on my phone, then zoom in on the part in blue light, then squint so I barely see what I’m doing and move the zoomed in section so that it only shows the party of the black and blue dress in yellow light, and then open my eyes again. Then it finally looked yellow and white.
This explains it neatly, the “gold” (which isn’t a color btw) is just brown, and the blue is quite light.
It’s all about contrasts, put a color near a light one and it appears darker, put it near a darker one and it appears lighter.
Bet the bordercolor on different browsers/phones made it look more one way or another.
Also, cold shadows are devoid of yellow so a blue is easily mistaken for a shadow. The impressionist used this trick a lot, light blue/cyan for shadows. Sounds crazy but it works.
Very clever trick.
deleted by creator
The link looks blue and black but the post still looks white and gold…
Edit: IT CHANGED TO BLACK AND BLUE WHILE I WAS LOOKING AT IT
Yes. The people who see white and gold must not register the yellow indoor light of the picture and are probably very outdoorsy people.
Brother I’m more vampire than man and I can only see white and gold. I have no idea how to use it as black and blue
Hm, this is interesting - I am indeed “outdoorsy” and could only see “white and gold in shadow”. I think this might also be because of the highlight on the right suggesting that it’s daylight all around and the dress is in deep shadow, and the blue color is also highly reminiscent of “white cloth in deep shadow”. This XKCD helped me clear up the confusion and now if I squint I can see both color schemes:
I’ve actually experienced the perceptual shift from blue and black to white and gold. The moment was fleeting, but definitely registered white and gold. And then back to blue and black, and I’ve never been able to replicate the shift.
I’m usually pretty good at shifting between the two ways to perceive optical illusions. But for this one I cannot see anything but white and gold. Even knowing that it’s actually blue and black, I still see it as that.
Having seen (briefly) what you see, I get it.
Nope.
Just asked my kids (Not around for the first time). One says blue and black/gray and the other said purple and green/gray. I’ve never known anyone who actually saw it as white and gold. Only heard that people do.
It’s so fucking white and gold I think there’s something wrong with you and your children
Look at the background. The lighting is a warm yellow. This shifts blue to white and black to gold.
That’s the thing, that background can also look like a harsh sunlight, which would typically give you a blue tint. Your brain has to guess which is right.
But it’s not tinted blue. It’s extremely vivid.
… Nope
I do
It’s white and gold to me
I do, too
It’s white/gold if you recognize that it’s lit from behind. So the dress appearing darker is due to there being much less light on it than the stuff behind it.
I can’t see it as blue/black because I can’t make my brain ignore the fact that it’s backlit. But if your brain never recognizes that, then I suppose it would look blue.
They established that its blue and black. I see white and gold but the actual colour was never the debate.
Does it help that you can see the shadows of the sleeves on the body of the dress? There has to be light in front and above for that to happen.
The actual dress is blue and black and even when heavily backlit it just appears to be a lighter shade of blue, but not even close to white.
