This is more entertainment than debate so keep it friendly. I would think by now some of you have heard about people seeing different colors in a blue and black dress (according to some sources those are the actual dress colors.) A discussion of the matter. Part of the issue is the optical illusion of lighting, our brains correct colors and tell us what they should be, not what they are. The checkerboard illusion easily demonstrates how perception affects what colors we are sure we see. A and B are the same color. Some say it is the lighting tricking us like the checkerboard, some say it is different individual's color vision, and Bill Nye suggested light scatter had something to do with but that makes no sense because we should all be affected by the same light scatter. I see a slight blue tint to the white and gold trim. It surprises me some people see black instead of gold. I've tried isolating the black to see if I see a different color like you do with the checkerboard to see the squares are the same color, but I still don't see black. I'd love to see the actual dress in person with the same lighting as is in the image.
I agree on the blue tint on an otherwise white and gold dress. I also think it's ridiculous how viral this thing has become... Btw, here's an article that explains the colour illusion thingy a bit more: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/
AsapScience has a video about this on YouTube. The dress is black and blue. They show pictures of a woman wearing it at the end of the video. I see black and blue. Gosh, I love my brain. Here's the video:
My husband sees white and gold. I've always seen blue and black. I've done everything I could think of to try to see white and gold. But no matter what I do, I can only see blue and black. I'm artistic. I paint. I draw. I gave a speech in college on how to draw or paint any object in front of them just by learning how to "see" the object. For this reason, I think I'm incapable of seeing it as white and gold because I understand how lighting works and changes colors. I wish I could see it as white and gold... I feel left out. BuzzFeed reports that only 25% see blue and black. And yes, blue and black are the colors of the dress. The woman who wore it provided a photoin better lighting.
The thing I'm having trouble with is when you remove the cues in the checkerboard, you can see the squares are the same color. But I took a screenshot of just a section of the black band in the middle and looked at it in isolation on my desktop, it looked darker but still not black. I do see a light blue rather than white but it's nothing close to other images of the dress. When I look at a section of the white by itself on the desk top, again, it looks darker but not as dark as other images of the dress. On public radio just they had the professor who isolated the colors from just the image and says it is orange and blue. It's what this image shows: I'm also just as fascinated how this went from someone's single Tumblr post to melting the Internet.
I decided to take a closer look at the checkerboard, by placing the two squares (A and B) side by side, and here it is: -
The black in the image of the dress isn't going to look pure black because the color is being tainted by poor lighting. Backlighting (a bright source of light behind the subject) is a huge issue in photography that many experts know how to avoid. It's a serious issue in this photo. The backlighting is changing the actual colors of the dress. Still, I never could've imagined backlighting could so drastically alter colors for some people... I guess this is a lesson for professional photographers.
Twat is such a fun word. And prat. Why can't Americans pick up foreign slang? They are way more bloody fun.
It's hardly a surprise - most colours are not true "red" or whatever other colour. Most things we see contain a variety of colours. I've been drawing a tiger for my husband's birthday present and for the tiger's fur, so far I've used pale yellow, orange-yellow, orange, orchard yellow, medium brown, dark brown, as well as dark blue, black and shades of dark purple, and in areas there should be orange-red and reds. ALL of this for the orangey colour you recognise on a typical tiger's fur. If I were to simply colour it all brown or all orange it'd look like a cartoon. What's strange to me is people who insist something is just one colour. Usually when I get into disputes of "What colour is this?" it turns out that we're both right - we see a different dominant colour, but the truth is there're shades of both colours. Except once alerted to this, I see it, and the other person still wouldn't believe me...
The type of sheen on the darker fabric tells me the fabric of the dress has strong directionality. Different angles, different lighting, shadows, highlights, are going to evince different tones. I'm gay, I know these things. Whodathunk this dress would blaze across the internet in a single day. ETA: Also, have you ever been to the TV section at your local Best Buy or analogous venue and seen the many flat screens, side be side, in a huge bank across the wall. Lots of color value variance. Same thing happens with computer screens.
This makes the most sense of all the explanations, and I don't think I've seen/heard that on/from any of the science sources.
I feel like you can do this with anything. Where I used to live for a short while there was a black couch and me nor my roommates always closed the curtains and after a while the sun shining in turned the black into something else over the years. It's still a black couch but not really black. I sleep in a sleeping bag and the cherry redness also starts to wear off. Now it's yellow. I can take a picture of a red-white striped lighthouse and change the hue and what not digitally so that it becomes something else. As for the black and blue / white and gold dress, I see different pictures with what appears to be the same dress in different colors; digitally altered. Then I see this post about how a professor scientifically researched the case and isolated the correct color... It makes zero sense, any ten year old with a computer and MS Paint can do that. I'm not going to be racist, but the associated terminology comes to mind and seems appropriate. We're trying to determine what it's color is and we say we see what our brain accepts us to see (that is the mainstream dialogue as far is I understand). What ever... I think it's any color we can manually paint it; want red and orange? Photoshop away and see how we all try to discriminate it's pure and true color. It's not 100% black and blue I see in the corresponding picture, this is because the sun reflects off the material and maybe if it's fibers are physically painted in the factory it's done really badly and not with the right materials. What an ugly dress. It has nothing to do with my brain telling me it's black and blue even though it is gold and white. In no way does my brain not know how to translate gold and white patterns/combinations. I see gold an white when it is gold and white, and black and blue isn't gold and white. Dead simple; my brain doesn't alter anything, computers do. But in my eyes it's
I wouldn't be surprised if we see male versions of that dress (and maybe the original as well) for the next presidential election. Keep people focused on the important issues.
@123456789, everyone has been looking at the same image, the one in the middle in the OP. People are looking at the same image and seeing different colors. According to some surveys, about 75% of people see gold and white and about 25% see blue and black.
I know I've been staring at that picture for an hour trying to see black and blue...I guess I'm just incapable of being wrong
I have a question for people. Look to the right upper corner of the color charts in post #7. Look at the little boxes that say "new" on the top and "current" on the bottom. What colors do you see in the top half of the little box? Do you see brown or black, blue or white? I think because white is next to the blue most of us will see blue. But I'm mostly curious if people see black or brown on the other one. Those are the colors I see when I take the screen shot and isolate the colors from a single patch and look at them away from the dress.
