Blue and black or white and gold dress????

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yeah, I'm seeing yellow with a slight orange tinge.

To be fair I'm red green colorblind

[Acey]

V's example



I sampled both squares and put marks on the left there.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Acey

V's example



I sampled both squares and put marks on the left there.

That's messed up, yo.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Acey

Indeed, as per the other photos of it. But what I'm saying is... there is no black anywhere in the photo and this is proven by sampling the colours.

So my thought process on this is that to say the dress is black/blue, based on this photo, means you are either

a) subconsciously accounting for the fact that we know the actual dress is black/blue, or
b) subconsciously using what you know about how different types of lighting affect colours and correcting the white balance

...because, as per the photo, the darkest colour is a relatively moderate brown so you must be doing one of the two.

Well obviously you account for the lighting in a photo when judging the color of an object. Like if you see a photo of a room taken under warm lighting where white walls have an orange cast to them, you don't actually think the walls are orange, you know they're still white (or close to it) but are being affected by the temperature of the light source.

Or in the case of the dress, the whole image looks overexposed and under a warm light, so the black of the dress will tend to look faded (i.e. grey) with some warmth added which results in a darker brown color. But it's totally natural to compensate for the lighting conditions when judging color and that's exactly what people who think the blue is actually white are doing too. They're incorrectly thinking that it's a white dress under lighting conditions that make it look blue.

[Ace]

Originally Posted by Acey

V's example



I sampled both squares and put marks on the left there.

stop it!

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by V

Um, that's kind of the point of colour constancy. Our brains fill in the gaps.

What colour is the middle square in the front of the cube?

I've seen this solution before but it's always fun. I copied the square in photoshop and drag it back and forth across the light/dark boundary at the edge of the cube and watch it magically change colors.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

Originally Posted by Acey

Indeed, as per the other photos of it. But what I'm saying is... there is no black anywhere in the photo and this is proven by sampling the colours.

So my thought process on this is that to say the dress is black/blue, based on this photo, means you are either

a) subconsciously accounting for the fact that we know the actual dress is black/blue, or
b) subconsciously using what you know about how different types of lighting affect colours and correcting the white balance

...because, as per the photo, the darkest colour is a relatively moderate brown so you must be doing one of the two.

Absolutely wrong on a. My girlfriend showed me this picture with no context at first. She asked me what colour the dress was. I had never heard of this dress before or the buzz behind it. I was really confused by the question, and just said "It's blue and black". She stared at me in utter disbelief because she saw it as gold and white.

Edit: and b is not a good statement. Why wouldn't you account for white balance in the picture? When you're asked "what colour is this dress", who would respond with "well the lighting kinda makes it look dark yellow, even though I can tell it's black in real life. But I'll say goldish black anyway". No, the answer you give is "the dress is blue and black."

And to be clear, my girlfriend said white and bright gold. Not dark gold.

[Hugh Jahrmes]

Lavender and brownish copper


First break at work this morning, I'd say about 2/3 saw blue and black, rest white and gold.

Our HSE coordinator and myself saw a lavender / purplish blue and brownish "penny like" colour. We make the rules!

[polak]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

Absolutely wrong on a. My girlfriend showed me this picture with no context at first. She asked me what colour the dress was. I had never heard of this dress before or the buzz behind it. I was really confused by the question, and just said "It's blue and black". She stared at me in utter disbelief because she saw it as gold and white.

Same here.

I had a friend send me a snapchat asking what color it is, I only saw blue and black. The moment I looked it up online I immediatly saw white and gold. Then after reading some comments I was able to see both.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I've seen this solution before but it's always fun. I copied the square in photoshop and drag it back and forth across the light/dark boundary at the edge of the cube and watch it magically change colors.

I'll do that now just to show the others.

Originally Posted by Hugh Jahrmes

Lavender and brownish copper

Is the closest approximation to what I first saw as well. For me, I then thought... the colouring must be off, because those are quite ugly colours for a dress.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Acey

Indeed, as per the other photos of it. But what I'm saying is... there is no black anywhere in the photo and this is proven by sampling the colours.

Right cause it's not a question of what colour the pixels are, it's a question of what you see. The takeaway from this whole exercise is that your senses aren't at all like many people think. Perception can be manipulated and what you "see" is a mental model constructed and maintained in your brain rather than an image projected by a lens like a camera.

People are, as you say, subconsciously accounting for things.. but even subconscious is maybe not the best wording, it's just the way the brain works.

Like the cube that V posted.

Or here's another one:



The cubes are the exact same colour.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

Edit: and b is not a good statement. Why wouldn't you account for white balance in the picture? When you're asked "what colour is this dress", who would respond with "well the lighting kinda makes it look dark yellow, even though I can tell it's black in real life. But I'll say goldish black anyway". No, the answer you give is "the dress is blue and black."

Yes. You've firmly established your take on this. Clearly there's a couple different ways to interpret it, else we wouldn't be 150 replies deep in this thread.

The issue is perhaps that it's not immediately apparent, maybe cause nothing else is instantly recognized as being skewed in the frame, that the white balance is way off... thus to me, at first glance the dress was light blue and gold, which matches the samples.

[Wood]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

Absolutely wrong on a. My girlfriend showed me this picture with no context at first. She asked me what colour the dress was. I had never heard of this dress before or the buzz behind it. I was really confused by the question, and just said "It's blue and black". She stared at me in utter disbelief because she saw it as gold and white.

Edit: and b is not a good statement. Why wouldn't you account for white balance in the picture? When you're asked "what colour is this dress", who would respond with "well the lighting kinda makes it look dark yellow, even though I can tell it's black in real life. But I'll say goldish black anyway". No, the answer you give is "the dress is blue and black."

And to be clear, my girlfriend said white and bright gold. Not dark gold.

Exact same for me. Gf asked me what color it was, never saw it before, I saw black and blue. She only sees white and gold

Scrolling down facebook I saw it as white and gold for a quick second. My eyes adjusted right away and it was back to black and blue

[photon]

Other optical illusions take advantage of other ways the brain works.



Or the one that'll probably most mess with your visual cortex

[Hockeyguy15]

You can tell who watches Brain Games because they understand how both sets of colours can be seen...Then there are the other people who will argue their colour set to the death, or say the other people are just trolling because there is no way they see the other colours.

[troutman]

No wonder we can't agree on a third jersey.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

Why wouldn't you account for white balance in the picture?

In this particular picture it is not immediately apparent that the white balance is way off, which is the origin of this entire debate. Overexposure is clear, but erroneous white balance is not. If there were some object in the frame that is widely known to be white, and accordingly it appeared orange, then this thread wouldn't exist.

This is interesting, because it's becoming less an issue of color constancy, and more an issue of being observant... because I think in V's example we'd all agree that the front square appears orangish/yellowish or something and the top one is clearly brown.

[V]

Actually, I'd disagree with that. In my cube they are forcing context on you, so you see the shadow, and obviously the square in the middle must be brighter, right?

But in the dress picture there's very little context, and so the difference between people's perceptions is explained by the assumptions that they make regardless of whether they know it or not. Different lighting sources will produce completely different colours in that example. So some see blue, others see white.

That's why this is so interesting to me. The picture leaves the brain to assume something that you're not even aware of, and different people make different assumptions.

[Banner]

I thought this was a huge troll job as well when I saw it on social media. I was out with friends last night and showed them the dress, we all had split views on the colour. I saved the pic on my phone and last night it was black and blue only to turn to white and gold when I looked at it today.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by V

Actually, I'd disagree with that. In my cube they are forcing context on you, so you see the shadow, and obviously the square in the middle must be brighter, right?

But in the dress picture there's very little context, and so the difference between people's perceptions is explained by the assumptions that they make regardless of whether they know it or not. Different lighting sources will produce completely different colours in that example. So some see blue, others see white.

That's why this is so interesting to me. The picture leaves the brain to assume something that you're not even aware of, and different people make different assumptions.

What I don't understand about the white/gold crowd is how you can see white because there is a context for white in the photo. The top right (beside the dress) is white and the colour to the left of that is blue.