Is The Dress Blue or White? Why The Internet Just Lost Its Mind
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It's not even an optical illusion. It's a piss poor photo taken by someone that would flunk a first year photography class with it.
No one likes to believe their senses are screwing with them.The Rogue Wolf said:
Me and a group of people were just looking through a sheet of color-blind tests once, and one of the guys actually was red-green color-blind. He got really quite upset about halfway through and started insisting that we were trolling him with what we saw versus what he saw, even though he knew he was color-blind.
I just figured it out. Some of you are hinting at it. This is basically the color equivalent of those bunny/duck optical illusions. It actually changes depending on how you look at it.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/images/Jastrow/Squiddoo_draft_lens5293602module39884272photo_1244962799rabbit-or-duck-illusion.gif
This morning I could have sworn that I saw a white and gold dress. Then, upon seeing it next to the other dresses I couldn't see how that would be possible at all. How did I ever see white and gold even a little bit? Then I red the following stating that people who see white and gold are trying to accomodate for poor lighting:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/this-might-explain-why-that-dress-looks-blue-and-black-and-w#.ogxgY3rzYz
I remembered saying that I thought it was in shade. But looking at the picture when it looked black and blue it didn't look like it was in shade at all.
So I stared at the image for a bit, trying to imagine it as if it were in shade and BAM, it suddenly looked white and gold again. Just like those optical illusions where you suddenly see it the other way.
So there you have it, it isn't wavelength or the way you view colors. It's actually an honest to goodness optical illusion. However, i can't see the blue and black dress again unless I view it along side the other dresses in the picture I linked above. I can look at that for awhile and then go back to the image by itself and repeat the shifted optical illusion. This is fascinating.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/images/Jastrow/Squiddoo_draft_lens5293602module39884272photo_1244962799rabbit-or-duck-illusion.gif
This morning I could have sworn that I saw a white and gold dress. Then, upon seeing it next to the other dresses I couldn't see how that would be possible at all. How did I ever see white and gold even a little bit? Then I red the following stating that people who see white and gold are trying to accomodate for poor lighting:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/this-might-explain-why-that-dress-looks-blue-and-black-and-w#.ogxgY3rzYz
I remembered saying that I thought it was in shade. But looking at the picture when it looked black and blue it didn't look like it was in shade at all.
So I stared at the image for a bit, trying to imagine it as if it were in shade and BAM, it suddenly looked white and gold again. Just like those optical illusions where you suddenly see it the other way.
So there you have it, it isn't wavelength or the way you view colors. It's actually an honest to goodness optical illusion. However, i can't see the blue and black dress again unless I view it along side the other dresses in the picture I linked above. I can look at that for awhile and then go back to the image by itself and repeat the shifted optical illusion. This is fascinating.
Yesterday I had been seeing it as gold & white. This morning when I woke up I saw it as blue & black.
Just now, my cat walks in the room and I follow her out on a sunny balcony. I walked back in and looked again, and the dress was gold & white again. So I close my eyes for a couple of minutes (as they were when i was sleeping), my irises narrow, and it returns to blue and black.
It's to do with the aperture of your iris when you look at it. If you're seeing blue and black look into a light source for a few seconds until your pupils dilate. Then look at it.
Just now, my cat walks in the room and I follow her out on a sunny balcony. I walked back in and looked again, and the dress was gold & white again. So I close my eyes for a couple of minutes (as they were when i was sleeping), my irises narrow, and it returns to blue and black.
It's to do with the aperture of your iris when you look at it. If you're seeing blue and black look into a light source for a few seconds until your pupils dilate. Then look at it.
Yes people do get angry, but it's understandable.Eclipse Dragon said:
Imagine someone telling you the sky was green when you know it to be blue. You'd think they were Joshing you and being a bit of a prat. Now imagine half of everyone in a room being in disagreement over the color of the sky. We assume that other people think just like use, and have the same experiences. The contradiction, if you're unaware of the possibility of the illusion, results in cognitive dissonance that makes people think the other is being overtly dishonest with them.
Yeah, seeing it as white and gold certainly seems to be the brain accommodate for shade. If you compare the dresses (even though they're only one dress) you'll note that one looks like it's in the shade (gold and white) and the other doesn't (black and blue).floppylobster said:
After being out in the bright mountain light, reflected by the snow, I was entirely unable to see anything else than white/pale blue and gold. Now, in nighttime, the stronger blue has appeared. Although I cannot be certain this is not some elaborate hoax using two different pictures of the dress.
For me it looked like blue and gold, though I was also able to see it as a white and gold dress photoshopped in from a picture taken in a blue-lit room.
Excuse you? You don't believe it, that's fine. But you clearly do not even know what pseudoscience is. It has nothing to do with color blindness. That is a direct result of cone cell variations. This has nothing to do with that. This is about perception but I wouldn't expect you to understand anything.mad825 said:
I don't care if you are on board or not, I'm only telling you what other people have reported. My own girlfriend and her coworkers were having a fun day fighting over this, all from the same image on her laptop and people reporting seeing different things. It's a damn optical illusion, not pseudoscience. It's neurology, not variations on cone cells.
Oh man, thanks for putting those pictures up. I was looking at the one in this article and trying to figure out how you could possible get blue and black out of that picture. But then, I saw your three pictures and for just a second, maybe even half a second, the one in the middle darkened enough that I could briefly see the trick. Otherwise, I was just going to go nuts trying to see this.Lightknight said:
This is pretty freaking cool.
I put this into photoshop and zoomed into the specific pixels to confirm it is a very light blue, and a strong gold colour. I was about to write a comment about how while the blue is perfectly true, the black is absolute nonsense, then after about 10 minutes I went back into photoshop and... It's dark blue and pure black.Shanahanapp said:
BOLLOCKS! How did it change?!?
When I zoom into the dress pixels the blue is definitely interpreted by my eyes as being several shades darker than I know it was several minutes ago. The gold is just black. It's just black.
I remember all those hipster posts of "Dude, how do we, like, not know that we see all colours differently, so what someone considers blue could be green to someone else?" And I just don't know anymore.
Curse you eyes! You have betrayed my trust.
As has been stated, it's a screwy image fault and people are up in arms over it.
What the dress IS...is ugly. It wouldn't flatter the woman wearing it, in my opinion.
What the dress IS...is ugly. It wouldn't flatter the woman wearing it, in my opinion.
It looked white. so i had to doublecheck. Photoshop confirmed that its blue and gold.
no, our eyes are actually quite horrible because we never fully evolved to see above-ground unlike some other mammals. this is why human eyesight, as much as we rely on it, are inferior to many other animals. our eyes have many flaws. they are actually horrible are representing "reality". yet we rely on them a lot.
well then blame the camera operator because the actual RGB color in that picture is 120:106:67 which resolves to a brownish gold. (of course with variation for shadows). the blue area resolves to 128:140:178 which is light blue. if the dress was not blue and gold then the camera taking the picture has failed.
I put it on photoshop exported the color and made a new image that was filled entirely with that single color, so no contrast illusions. the colors of the image is blue and gold/brown. if the dress does not match the problem exists with the photo camera and not the eyes.TopazFusion said:Rest assured, the dress is actually blue and black, as the image from the dress's online store page confirms:
thumbnail looked blue and gold. image looked white and gold. doublechecked in photoshop - blue and gold.Silentpony said:
People who are used to taking pictures will "auto-correct" it as just having horrible white-balance which is exactly what it initially looks like. and if you actually correct that with idea that it is white you get the left picture from Lightknight.Hagi said:
as far as gold part goes, its quite clear that the "Grey" ones are picked from shadows. the yellow one is what the non-shadow portion of that dress looks like. its not gold, but its brownish yellow.
If the dress is actually blue and black, then the explanation given for why people see it as different colors makes no sense. The explanation given is that your eyes either dismiss the blue part or the gold part, and that people who dismiss the blue part see white and gold while people who dismiss the gold part see blue and black. But if the dress is actually blue and black instead of blue and gold, then that would mean that there is no gold part to dismiss, and that some people are just seeing the dress correctly while others are not for seemingly no reason.
In other words, the Editor's Note for this article dismisses the entire article.
In other words, the Editor's Note for this article dismisses the entire article.