Never understood this one, or believed anyone who said they saw black/blue. You can zoom in and colour pick, the colours are measurable and objectively gold and blue-white.
I’m the exact opposite. When somebody first showed me the picture, I thought “is this some kind of trick question? It’s obviously black and blue”. And still to this day, after many arguments with (friends and family) as what I can only perceive as stubborn defensiveness, I can still only ever perceive it as black and blue.
I literally cannot override my color perception to trick myself into seeing white and gold and it feels like a mistake a lot of people made (to see white and gold) and then just stuck with and argued for (“it’s an optical illusion!” or “look at the pixels!”).
Even if you zoom in really far? Thats what I cant wrap my head around. The colour is so far from black I cant see how anyone would interpret it as black.
Definitely. Part of how it works for me, is I see the lighting around the space, and how white/bright looks, and how it’s VERY different from the dress.
So then my brain picks up on how light in the image works, and then makes a profile that the camera is shitty in a shitty environment, and how to interpret color and context.
Only after that does my brain decipher what’s in the picture, being The Dress®
I would argue that if somebody de-blurred the picture, and cut out the dress apart from the background, and just had the dress…
Hmmm… Nah, because… even then, I can see how the seams are basically black or far darker blue (like in the shading), and not actual white or gold.
I literally cannot override my color perception to trick myself […]
If biology had intent, I’d think this is intentional. You’re not supposed to be able to do that.
Once your brain decides on a context, that becomes the (percieved) truth, and it’ll take a lot of new information to change your mind because your brain will invent reasons why what you’re seeing is correct. Your brain makes up a story, that story seems to make sense, and so new perceptions not only need to make sense but also disprove the story it has.
Take, for instance, this silhouette. It has no lines to indicate depth, but I bet you’ll settle on a mental 3D model—you’ll be able to see where the hips end, which leg is doing what—and it’ll be really hard to switch perception from spinning one direction to spinning the other.
No see, with that, I can switch back and forth. It’s trippy, but I can. Which is why the dress thing is so weird: I’ve tried many times (over the last…shudders decade).
That’s why I find the dress kind of an outlier and actual doubt. It just doesn’t add up to me because I can’t seem to switch to white-gold.
But then, also, going off the different people here, I also find it hard to believe there would be what looks like 40-45% of people who still are the exact opposite, in only being able to see white-gold, rather than blue black.
Like I get how technically, “the pixels…”, but that doesn’t explain to me how there’s like a near-50% of people (at least the English-speaking internet demographic) that are… To put it bluntly, seemingly deficient. It would be one thing if there was no definitive proof of what color the dress actually is, or if it was just “some people see it start out one way and other people see it the other way, but then both people could switch between”, but it’s evidently NOT that - it’s that some people are just stuck unable to interpret the color in a shitty picture correctly, and that other people are unable to interpret it wrongly (and maybe a smaller chunk of people who are able to go back and forth, but then that presents even more discussions).
There’s a lot going on here, both psycho-optically, psychologically, and socially, and I don’t think internet forums/social media that can’t isolate, drill down, and then research the different sections of the blue-black/white-gold dress phenomenon should be bringing it up (though good luck with that) and basically just flaming and trolling each other in such a… Cognitively shallow way.
It’s worth examining, absolutely. But absolutely not in this format.
When you look at the checker shadow illusion, do you see the pixels as identical in color? If not, then obviously there’s more to human perception than just the color of the pixel code.
Right. Since we have no context, the dress is white and gold objectively. Assuming context of the color of the light is incorrect, we don’t have it. The dress is actually black and purple but the image is doctored to be white and gold. So it’s white and gold. The image is not the object. We’re talking about the image, not the object.
Zooming up on the checker, it’s objectively gray. Zooming out, it’s objectively white. The only correct interpretation is the shadow darkens the image. But in the dress picture, we don’t know what the color of the light is, so it’s not comparable.
Since we have no context, the dress is white and gold objectively.
The actual physical object photographed is black and blue.
White and gold appear when the brain makes the assumption that the dress falls within a shadow (effectively applying a filter that shifts the white balance towards bluer colors and brightness down significantly compared to direct sunlight). Only in real life, the photographed dress did not fall within a shadow, and instead was affected by a yellowish lens flare, so the subconscious color correction that leads a viewer to assume white and gold was erroneously applied.
I see white and gold. But to claim that it’s “objectively” white and gold ignores how the human brain perceives color and ignores that the actual photograph was a blue and black dress.
Why do you assume it’s a yellow tint? What if all the objects in the back are simply yellow?
The actual object is blue, the actual photograph is white. They are two separate concepts. We only think it’s blue because we were told - how do we even know that’s true, have you seen the dress in person? Using a color picker is the only objective solution that doesn’t rely on flawed interference.
I see white/gold too, and this always fascinated me because I’m wrong. The real dress is black/blue. It’s very hard for me to perceive that way, partly due to the bad quality picture, and particularly the background lighting.
The gold is black and the white is a dark blue irl, but in the bad coloring/lighting of the picture, the deep blue is quite washed out. Know that the colors are very washed out, know that the “gold” is black. Focus on the lower left where the colors are closest to true and block out the rest, especially the bright parts. The thick black stripe in the middle can also be a good spot to start to see it.
When I first saw the pic it was clearly blue/black. I laughed out loud when my wife asked me about the white/gold dress. I showed her my phone, and she agreed she could kinda see the blue black. She showed me hers, and I could kinda make out the white gold.
The device you view it on matters, and the lighting around you. For a while I could switch between them with concentration.
Yeah, and then people started posting comparison shots of what both groups of people see, side by side. One dress clearly being blue/black, and the other being clearly white/gold.
I just remember thinking to myself how people can look at that and still believe in nonsense. If there really was something going on with the colors, light wavelength, etc. we’d just be looking at a side-by-side image of two identical dresses, like looking at a stereoscopic image.
You never understood it because you are wrong. If you actually *color pick you will see that it is blue and black. Not only are you eyes/brain incorrect, but the original dress is actually blue and black.
This dress is black and blue. I am laughing hysterically that any of you think it’s not. Is your eyesight bad in other ways? Honestly asking because mine is really good.
Never understood this one, or believed anyone who said they saw black/blue. You can zoom in and colour pick, the colours are measurable and objectively gold and blue-white.
I’m the exact opposite. When somebody first showed me the picture, I thought “is this some kind of trick question? It’s obviously black and blue”. And still to this day, after many arguments with (friends and family) as what I can only perceive as stubborn defensiveness, I can still only ever perceive it as black and blue.
I literally cannot override my color perception to trick myself into seeing white and gold and it feels like a mistake a lot of people made (to see white and gold) and then just stuck with and argued for (“it’s an optical illusion!” or “look at the pixels!”).
Even if you zoom in really far? Thats what I cant wrap my head around. The colour is so far from black I cant see how anyone would interpret it as black.
Definitely. Part of how it works for me, is I see the lighting around the space, and how white/bright looks, and how it’s VERY different from the dress.
So then my brain picks up on how light in the image works, and then makes a profile that the camera is shitty in a shitty environment, and how to interpret color and context.
Only after that does my brain decipher what’s in the picture, being The Dress®
I would argue that if somebody de-blurred the picture, and cut out the dress apart from the background, and just had the dress…
Hmmm… Nah, because… even then, I can see how the seams are basically black or far darker blue (like in the shading), and not actual white or gold.
Yeah I just don’t get how white and gold is seen.
If biology had intent, I’d think this is intentional. You’re not supposed to be able to do that.
Once your brain decides on a context, that becomes the (percieved) truth, and it’ll take a lot of new information to change your mind because your brain will invent reasons why what you’re seeing is correct. Your brain makes up a story, that story seems to make sense, and so new perceptions not only need to make sense but also disprove the story it has.
Take, for instance, this silhouette. It has no lines to indicate depth, but I bet you’ll settle on a mental 3D model—you’ll be able to see where the hips end, which leg is doing what—and it’ll be really hard to switch perception from spinning one direction to spinning the other.
No see, with that, I can switch back and forth. It’s trippy, but I can. Which is why the dress thing is so weird: I’ve tried many times (over the last…shudders decade).
That’s why I find the dress kind of an outlier and actual doubt. It just doesn’t add up to me because I can’t seem to switch to white-gold.
But then, also, going off the different people here, I also find it hard to believe there would be what looks like 40-45% of people who still are the exact opposite, in only being able to see white-gold, rather than blue black.
Like I get how technically, “the pixels…”, but that doesn’t explain to me how there’s like a near-50% of people (at least the English-speaking internet demographic) that are… To put it bluntly, seemingly deficient. It would be one thing if there was no definitive proof of what color the dress actually is, or if it was just “some people see it start out one way and other people see it the other way, but then both people could switch between”, but it’s evidently NOT that - it’s that some people are just stuck unable to interpret the color in a shitty picture correctly, and that other people are unable to interpret it wrongly (and maybe a smaller chunk of people who are able to go back and forth, but then that presents even more discussions).
There’s a lot going on here, both psycho-optically, psychologically, and socially, and I don’t think internet forums/social media that can’t isolate, drill down, and then research the different sections of the blue-black/white-gold dress phenomenon should be bringing it up (though good luck with that) and basically just flaming and trolling each other in such a… Cognitively shallow way.
It’s worth examining, absolutely. But absolutely not in this format.
When you look at the checker shadow illusion, do you see the pixels as identical in color? If not, then obviously there’s more to human perception than just the color of the pixel code.
Depends on whether I zoom in so the color fills the screen or not. This doesn’t change the color values that appear on the screen.
It sounds like you’re agreeing with me that color perception relies on context, not just the color code of the pixel on the screen.
Right. Since we have no context, the dress is white and gold objectively. Assuming context of the color of the light is incorrect, we don’t have it. The dress is actually black and purple but the image is doctored to be white and gold. So it’s white and gold. The image is not the object. We’re talking about the image, not the object.
Zooming up on the checker, it’s objectively gray. Zooming out, it’s objectively white. The only correct interpretation is the shadow darkens the image. But in the dress picture, we don’t know what the color of the light is, so it’s not comparable.
The actual physical object photographed is black and blue.
White and gold appear when the brain makes the assumption that the dress falls within a shadow (effectively applying a filter that shifts the white balance towards bluer colors and brightness down significantly compared to direct sunlight). Only in real life, the photographed dress did not fall within a shadow, and instead was affected by a yellowish lens flare, so the subconscious color correction that leads a viewer to assume white and gold was erroneously applied.
I see white and gold. But to claim that it’s “objectively” white and gold ignores how the human brain perceives color and ignores that the actual photograph was a blue and black dress.
Why do you assume it’s a yellow tint? What if all the objects in the back are simply yellow?
The actual object is blue, the actual photograph is white. They are two separate concepts. We only think it’s blue because we were told - how do we even know that’s true, have you seen the dress in person? Using a color picker is the only objective solution that doesn’t rely on flawed interference.
That is witchcraft.
Funny, I see black and blue, of course the “black” part looks like gold but I think it’s because of the lighting and the actual color is dark gray
I see white/gold too, and this always fascinated me because I’m wrong. The real dress is black/blue. It’s very hard for me to perceive that way, partly due to the bad quality picture, and particularly the background lighting.
The gold is black and the white is a dark blue irl, but in the bad coloring/lighting of the picture, the deep blue is quite washed out. Know that the colors are very washed out, know that the “gold” is black. Focus on the lower left where the colors are closest to true and block out the rest, especially the bright parts. The thick black stripe in the middle can also be a good spot to start to see it.
When I first saw the pic it was clearly blue/black. I laughed out loud when my wife asked me about the white/gold dress. I showed her my phone, and she agreed she could kinda see the blue black. She showed me hers, and I could kinda make out the white gold.
The device you view it on matters, and the lighting around you. For a while I could switch between them with concentration.
This pic is obviously white/gold.
Were taking about the pixels on the screen, not the real dress though, the colors on screen are what you see and theyre gold and blue-white
Show me the white here. I thought gold was like a yellow orange, not a brown-grey color
Thats the blue-white. Or light blue.
Yeah, and then people started posting comparison shots of what both groups of people see, side by side. One dress clearly being blue/black, and the other being clearly white/gold.
I just remember thinking to myself how people can look at that and still believe in nonsense. If there really was something going on with the colors, light wavelength, etc. we’d just be looking at a side-by-side image of two identical dresses, like looking at a stereoscopic image.
You never understood it because you are wrong. If you actually *color pick you will see that it is blue and black. Not only are you eyes/brain incorrect, but the original dress is actually blue and black.
I love how people keep saying this without actually picking the colours. There’s no black pixels on there at all.
I did that in photoshop and it confirned what my eyes saw
This dress is black and blue. I am laughing hysterically that any of you think it’s not. Is your eyesight bad in other ways? Honestly asking because mine is really good.
I regularly colour-match clothes as part of my retouching work. My eyes are fine otherwise I wouldn’t be trusted with critical color work.
Idk there is no universe in which this is anything but blue and black.
How does it feel to be objectively wrong?
This isn’t the picture they used at the time either, why are we cropping it now?