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.
If anything, I’m more interested in how THAT color is being interpreted than the dress itself. Does it become shade to people because they perceive it relative to the dress? Because, I mean, we know that it is factually light. So how are people perceiving it to be the absence of light? Can you explain that bit?
The brain doesn’t just read raw brightness; it interprets that brightness in relation to what it thinks is going on in the scene.
So when someone sees the dress as white and gold, they’re usually assuming the scene is lit by cool, natural light — like sunlight or shade. That makes the brain treat the lighter areas as a white-ish or light blue material under shadow. The darker areas (what you see as black) become gold or brown, because the brain thinks it’s seeing lighter fabric catching less light.
You, on the other hand, are likely interpreting the lighting as warm and direct — maybe indoor, overexposed lighting. So your brain treats the pale pixels not as light-colored fabric, but as light reflecting off a darker blue surface. The same with the black: it’s being “lightened” by the glare which changes the pixel representation to gold, but you interpret it as black under strong light, not gold.
Hey, just arguing with you in a different comment chain now. So, like, I see the optical illusion. But the background is clearly yellow in the picture? So I don’t understand how your brain is interpreting that part? To me it seems like you’re ignoring the background of the image for this point. Can you go more in depth on that part, specifically? Does that yellow light look blue to you?
Because shade works in 3D and it’s not clear how far away the background is from this picture. But yes, ‘dress shaped and size amounts of shade’ exist; trees, could be on a shaded balcony, etc.
Maybe I’m just an elevated being but I can clearly tell that the righthand side is a mirror on a wall and that the tan below it is where the floor meets the wall. Because of that, I can roughly make out the angle and know that we should be seeing some shade on the side if any existed in the first place.
No because it’s your subconscious, otherwise you’d have no problem understanding why it’s was ambigious. (Same applies for elevated beings - they can grasp differences in human colour perception).
And either way, even if your assumptions were true you still don’t know the angle of the sun, potential coverings, etc. You can’t predict the shade without that info so the logical choice would be to use the colours the pixels display.
“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”.
Anyway, science has determined that my way is most based
A study carried out by Schlaffke et al. reported that individuals who saw the dress as white and gold showed increased activity in the frontal and parietal regions of the brain. These areas are thought to be critical in higher cognition activities such as top-down modulation in visual perception
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 selected the brightest highlights on the dress. I selected more average colors here.
I also included WHITE AND GOLD next to the selected colors, so you can see what they actually look like. Are you really saying that blue is white and brown-grey is gold?
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.
I can literally switch between perceptions with this exact image. It’s sort of like that “are there six cubes or ten” illusion. Depending on how I look at it, I can see either one.
Exactly. Or that silhouette of a spinning ballerina. I can switch the direction that she is spinning at will as well. There’s nothing to go by because it’s a perfectly flat, projected silhouette without any shadows, so anybody is free to interpret the rotation however they like. 😁
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…
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.
Optical illusion innit
If anything, I’m more interested in how THAT color is being interpreted than the dress itself. Does it become shade to people because they perceive it relative to the dress? Because, I mean, we know that it is factually light. So how are people perceiving it to be the absence of light? Can you explain that bit?
The brain doesn’t just read raw brightness; it interprets that brightness in relation to what it thinks is going on in the scene.
So when someone sees the dress as white and gold, they’re usually assuming the scene is lit by cool, natural light — like sunlight or shade. That makes the brain treat the lighter areas as a white-ish or light blue material under shadow. The darker areas (what you see as black) become gold or brown, because the brain thinks it’s seeing lighter fabric catching less light.
You, on the other hand, are likely interpreting the lighting as warm and direct — maybe indoor, overexposed lighting. So your brain treats the pale pixels not as light-colored fabric, but as light reflecting off a darker blue surface. The same with the black: it’s being “lightened” by the glare which changes the pixel representation to gold, but you interpret it as black under strong light, not gold.
Hey, just arguing with you in a different comment chain now. So, like, I see the optical illusion. But the background is clearly yellow in the picture? So I don’t understand how your brain is interpreting that part? To me it seems like you’re ignoring the background of the image for this point. Can you go more in depth on that part, specifically? Does that yellow light look blue to you?
Looks like a sunny background and that the dress is in the shade
So the idea is that the dress is, what, covered in an exactly dress shaped and sized amount of shade? Or else why wouldn’t we see shade anywhere else?
Because shade works in 3D and it’s not clear how far away the background is from this picture. But yes, ‘dress shaped and size amounts of shade’ exist; trees, could be on a shaded balcony, etc.
Maybe I’m just an elevated being but I can clearly tell that the righthand side is a mirror on a wall and that the tan below it is where the floor meets the wall. Because of that, I can roughly make out the angle and know that we should be seeing some shade on the side if any existed in the first place.
Does that make sense?
No because it’s your subconscious, otherwise you’d have no problem understanding why it’s was ambigious. (Same applies for elevated beings - they can grasp differences in human colour perception).
And either way, even if your assumptions were true you still don’t know the angle of the sun, potential coverings, etc. You can’t predict the shade without that info so the logical choice would be to use the colours the pixels display.
“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”.
That we’re curious problem solvers?
Anyway, science has determined that my way is most based
Speak for yourself. I’m a solvem probler.
clearly some problems need to be taken from behind
Solve me Daddy
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.
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.
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.
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 can sample the colours and see it’s white with a very light blue tinge and gold.
People who see it as blue and black are (correctly in this case) auto-correcting for the yellow light as the dress itself is black and blue.
Whereas people who see it as white and gold are (subconsciously) assuming a blue shadow and seeing the pixels as they’re displayed.
You selected the brightest highlights on the dress. I selected more average colors here. I also included WHITE AND GOLD next to the selected colors, so you can see what they actually look like. Are you really saying that blue is white and brown-grey is gold?
Well you would select the brightest bit to get an idea of the bit that was least impacted by the shadow.
But yes still closer to white and gold than (dark) 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’re good. It’s black and blue. At a pinch, maybe blue and black.
It’s very clearly white and gold.
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.
I can literally switch between perceptions with this exact image. It’s sort of like that “are there six cubes or ten” illusion. Depending on how I look at it, I can see either one.
Exactly. Or that silhouette of a spinning ballerina. I can switch the direction that she is spinning at will as well. There’s nothing to go by because it’s a perfectly flat, projected silhouette without any shadows, so anybody is free to interpret the rotation however they like. 😁
What is global illumination from sky lighting again ??
Carcinogenic.
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.