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Black and Blue

37 (42.5%)

White and Gold

21 (24.1%)

Other

14 (16.1%)

Both! It changes!

15 (17.2%)

Total Members Voted: 83

Voting closed: April 02, 2015, 10:16:30 pm

[Moghjubar]

Always appears brown|gold and some shade of blue to me.

[Putnam]

Fact: The illusion you are talking about exists.
Fiction: The illusion has been presented with the dress to show this happening.

You are the one here that is declaring your hypothesis is right without any decent evidence. If the same standards were followed for all scientific studies done so far, we would be decades behind.

There is sufficient evidence. The vast majority of people who are not you see the effect that you are claiming does not exist. You are claiming it does not exist because you do not see it. If I were to make a similar claim, it would be that Venezuela does not exist, as I have not seen it.

Ok I will make this clear. Unlike the illusions, I cannot see both situations. I have seen white and gold only once, not in a situation where surrounding light would have an effect and had it change before my eyes. Take the dress and surround it in whatever color you like, it does not change color (don't know if this is the same for white/gold to black/blue people). The only thing anyone has done, is post pictures of these illusions without actually demonstrating that this happens with the actual picture of the dress.

It does change color for me and most people. Your perception is not the same as everyone else's. You are not the be-all-end-all of humankind.

[LordBucket]

you see that xkcd picture right? Both of the drawn dresses are the same colour, so unless
you see them on both sides as the same, I consider my argument proven.

Regarding the xkcd explanation, while I acknowledge that phenomenon, I believe it may be insufficient in this case. I present two pieces of evidence:

1) http://i.imgur.com/Ktscov0.png

That is the image from the OP on the left, next to the image from the OP color inverted on the right. To those who see the dress on the left as white and gold, do you also see the color inverted dress as also white and gold? Does that not seem peculiar?

2) For those who see white and gold, look at the image in the OP. Now either tilt your monitor or stand up and adjust your angle of view to the screen. As you approach 180 degrees, does the white and gold definitely change appearance to blue and black? Now, perform the same test with the xkcd image. Does this same color-change phenomenon not occur?


Best explanation I've read is that different people have varying numbers of photoreceptor cells in their eyes. Regardless of what color the actual dress is or how badly flooded the lighting on the image, the resultant colors seem to happen to be in a range where the variances in number of color receptor cells among people in enough to change our perception of the image. When you tilt your monitor, you're "condensing" the area with a given amount of light into a small area, thereby compacting the same amount of blue light into a smaller area, making it more spatially dense, past the threshold where you tend to interpret it as being blue.

Some portion of people happen to have a few more blue photoreceptor cells so they don't as need quite as much blue light in a given area to interpret it as blue. That wouldn't explain the people who have seen the dress change colors, but while the xkcd explanation seems insufficient on its own, it is very probably a factor, and the relatively smaller number of people who see it change might simply happen to be near the middle range of receptor cells to where the relative colors involved can shift their perception one way or another.

[10ebbor10]

That is the image from the OP on the left, next to the image from the OP color inverted on the right. To those who see the dress on the left as white and gold, do you also see the color inverted dress as also white and gold? Does that not seem peculiar?

Not really. The real colour  is blue and black, so it's quite logical that the black becomes white and the blue becomes yellow. Also why the ordering of the stripes changes.

2) For those who see white and gold, look at the image in the OP. Now either tilt your monitor or stand up and adjust your angle of view to the screen. As you approach 180 degrees, does the white and gold definitely change appearance to blue and black? Now, perform the same test with the xkcd image. Does this same color-change phenomenon not occur?

Both images remain yellow to bluish white regardless of viewing angle.

[andrea]

a thing I tried was taking RGB values from both colors in the picture and painting full screens of them.
When shown those colors alone, without the background of the picture or lightning effects... people who used to see them as black and blue kept seeing them as black and blue. People who saw them as white and gold kept seeing them as such. Sadly, I only tried it on people who knew what I was doing, so it is not really that impartial of a test.Still, it seems odd that this illusion is entirely based on background contrast. I am among people who don't see any dramatic change in dress color as the background changes(not that I don't see any change, but not enough to turn gold into pitch)

Besides, I heard several other possible causes from various articles. Somebody suggested it is based on the underlying assumptions on lightning conditions ( different from merely contrast) for example. Not sure how valid they are.

@lordbucket

1) I see the left as white and gold, and yes, I also see the right picture as white and gold ( strips inverted, of course). in fact, I see it whiter on the right. on the left, I tend to see a very light shade of blue

2) nope. whatever effect you are looking for, I am not seeing it.

[10ebbor10]

a thing I tried was taking RGB values from both colors in the picture and painting full screens of them.
When shown those colors alone, without the background of the picture or lightning effects... people who used to see them as black and blue kept seeing them as black and blue. People who saw them as white and gold kept seeing them as such. Sadly, I only tried it on people who knew what I was doing, so it is not really that impartial of a test.Still, it seems odd that this illusion is entirely based on background contrast. I am among people who don't see any dramatic change in dress color as the background changes(not that I don't see any change, but not enough to turn gold into pitch)

Really?

With me the RGB values react as how you would expect them to react. Ie, what I formely saw as gold turned out to be black, and what I saw as white became blue.

[andrea]

weird stuff, indeed.

to me, gold changed hue a bit, more toward brownish maybe. the very light blue I saw became slightly less light.
I still didn't see neither black nor a strong blue.

disclaimer: I am a bit colorblind

[10ebbor10]

Oh, like that. That's because there's neither a strong black nor a strong blue. Picture is not taken in ideal circumstances.

[andrea]

from what I read, the blue part not only is actually a strong blue, but it is also perceived as such. The darkest I see it is the color of the sky, or of a white thing in shadow.(edit:looking again, it is the color of the sky roughly during sunset, while looking away from the sun(if you looked at the sun , it would be orange of course )), when it starts getting darker but there still is plenty of light)
And I still fail to perceive the gold as black.

but anyway, if we want to run a test, here are the colors, isolated from environment ( picked from the top of the dress)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[My Name is Immaterial]

That's gold and blue. Wow.

[WealthyRadish]

Yeah, I'm not sure where people are getting the black from. Blue and bronze is all I've seen, and the "white and gold" lunatics should probably be chemically castrated.

Kind of funny how the illusion works though.

[Micro102]

*tilts laptop screen*

mind=blown


I suppose it is a series of different reasons that all have variation within humans, which combine to cause dramatic differences in vision. Just one last question. If anyone who sees white and gold could please crop out the background, take a break, then look again at the cropped out dress and tell me what colors they see, that would be awesome.

[Putnam]

I saw white and gold when the sun's out and blue and black when it's nighttime.

Natural lighting wreaks havoc on the image, apparently.

[ggamer]

guys let's all calm down

i wouldn't want somebody to get beat until they're white and gold

[redwallzyl]

Scishow did a video on it watch it.