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[Madness]

It changes for me. I see white and gold and then blue and black, and then back and forth. Sort of like that gif of the ballerina who's either dancing right or left.

 

[Permanently A]

Weird. When I looked at it this morning after I woke up it was very obviously white and gold, no question. But after a few hours it's now clearly blue and black.

Wtf

yup, same here. strange

 

[Booshka]

In every picture, on every screen, even when they were talking about this dumb shit on the morning news, I have only ever seen blue and black. The lighting for the pictures is all over the place, but the dress always looks blue and black.

 

[Flo_Evans]

What is interesting to me is you have one group that says blue/black They are correctly accounting for the yellow spotlight and understand the dress is indeed black.

Now the other group is saying there is a blue light/shadow (no evidence of this, white/black pattern next to dress shows no blue, hard shadows on dress itself indicate direct overhead light) and are correcting that to white. But then they see the gold in the black portions and just accept that as the real color.

 

[Voror]

Looks gold/tannish/brown and white though the lighting does give it a bit of a blue tint I think. Not seeig black at all.

I guess my eyes suck?

 

[cm osi]

IT'S WHITE AGAIN.

 

[big ander]

i'm gonna quote myself for the people on a new page still saying it's conclusively one or the other, or asking if their eyes are shit

good lord

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion
+
"Light enters the eye through the lens—different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you’re looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the “real” color of the object. “Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance,” says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. “But I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.”" - x

I get that the internet obsesses about arbitrary stuff all the time but that people are sincerely and passionately arguing that it's conclusively one or the other is insane. your eyes are not broken. other people's eyes are not broken.

when facebook and tumblr discover the optical illusion books in their elementary school libraries and pediatricians offices everything is going to burn the motherfuck down

.

Indeed. How few people know this?

I don't get it. my brothers and friends and I had like optical illusion books. I remember seeing this stuff for fun in school when a teacher ran out of material for the day. there are entire tv shows and sites dedicated to this stuff.

 

[rjinaz]

Just saw the dress for the first time. It looks light sky blue and gold to me no matter how I look at it. It was amusing to read all there different responses though.

 

[-COOLIO-]

I just showed this to someone and they said it's light blue/yellowish-brown

puts the rest of GAF to shame

ask her what color she thinks the dress is in real life.

 

[LosDaddie]

Hey, fuck you, buddy.

Spoiler

its 3

 

[Violet_0]

ask her what color she thinks the dress is in real life.

she didn't know, but she recognized the two colors in the photo on the first try

 

[Eternal Gamer]

I am amazed, I saw it gold and white first, I scrolled down the page to see the comments and then when I scrolled back to top, it has changed, now I see it black and blue and I didn't even hit the refresh buttom, seriously wtf!?.

 

[Fusebox]

when facebook and tumblr discover the optical illusion books in their elementary school libraries and pediatricians offices everything is going to burn the motherfuck down

Again with the faux-shock over people getting interested about this because y'know, illusions exist.

This may work on the same principle as classic illusions but the fact it wasn't deliberate and doesn't look anything like the classic illusions we're familiar with explains why it's picked up steam so fast.

 

[dark_prinny]

White and gold every time I see it.

 

[Davey Cakes]

I can kind of see the blue but I've tried several times and I don't even detect a hint of black. So weird.

 

[KyanMehwulfe]

this is all over Chinese social media... everyone has been spamming it on my WeChat since last night "biggest question in American right now" lol

looks sort of light blue and goldish-brown to me btw... ;p but also looks obviously saturated by exposure or lighting and doesn't look like it would be the same perceived light blue and goldish-brown IRL or a better and more accurately lighted photo

 

[Palculator]

Blue and black every time I looked. I even did the brightness thing; blue and black.

I believe #teamwhiteandgold are fraudsters.

 

[googleplex]

I see Blue and Gold. Is something wrong with my eyes

 

[Astral Dog]

Its a darkish blue photo of a white and gold dress.

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

I can freely switch between gold and white and gold and blue. To make it gold and blue I just have to focus past the picture. I can also make the lower gold part turn sort of black if I try, but the top part stays goldish brown no matter what.

 

[Costia]

Its a darkish blue photo of a white and gold dress.

Or a yellowish photo of a blue and grey dress.

 

[hachi]

Explanation in the OP is simply wrong, and fundamentally confuses sensation with perception. Seeing one color or the other is not a matter of your eye's particular physical configuration of rods and cones (though a higher or lower sensitivity could slightly predispose you towards one option, to an unknown extent), because it is a matter of interpreting the limited sense information in the image to produce a perception of a certain color, based on various quick assumptions about the lighting that must fill in where insufficient determinant information is provided in the image. Many have said this already, but I'm reiterating that explanations based purely on sensation are nonsense, as evidenced by the cases of many people who were able to see both colors with very little time gap in between.

 

[big ander]

Again with the faux-shock over people getting interested about this because y'know, illusions exist.

This may work on the same principle as classic illusions but the fact it wasn't deliberate and doesn't look anything like the classic illusions we're familiar with explains why it's picked up steam so fast.

it explains why it's picked up steam so fast. not why everyone is livid at each other over the differing interpretations. the reaction isn't "oh wow really cool unexpected optical illusion," it's "you're all fucking wrong and stupid idiots how can you see anything else dumby #teamgoldenrodandeggshellwhite"
I'm not shocked that this is going viral, I'm shocked that the median reaction seems to be general lack of familiarity with the concept of an optical illusion in the first place

 

[thepotatoman]

I can see how people might disagree on whether it's black or gold, but I have no clue how anyone is seeing white where it's so obviously blue.

Maybe some people are only good at distinguishing almost black colors seeing gold and white, while others are only good at distinguishing almost white colors, seeing black and blue?

 

[trh]

Explanation in the OP is simply wrong, and fundamentally confuses sensation with perception. Seeing one color or the other is not a matter of your eye's particular physical configuration of rods and cones (though a higher or lower sensitivity could slightly predispose you towards one option, to an unknown extent), because it is a matter of interpreting the limited sense information in the image to produce a perception of a certain color, based on various quick assumptions about the lighting that must fill in where insufficient determinant information is provided in the image. Many have said this already, but I'm reiterating that explanations based purely on sensation are nonsense, as evidenced by the cases of many people who were able to see both colors with very little time gap in between.

This is my take as well, although I have nothing to back it up. Still, I'm completely fascinated by all of this and I periodically check in to see what colors I'll get.


Edit: Alternate explanation that I'm going with from now on is the Illuminati.

 

[Red]

Just gave it another try. It's white and gold on my chromebook and blue and black on my iPhone, even when I view the same picture side by side. So maybe these differences are skewed because of poor screen calibration (though my wife and I disagreed about the colors on the same screen last night).

On my chromebook, when viewing the top half of the dress I see white and gold. When viewing the bottom half, I see blue and black. It can be either blue/black or white/gold depending on my vertical viewing angle.

 

[Fusebox]

it explains why it's picked up steam so fast. not why everyone is livid at each other over the differing interpretations. the reaction isn't "oh wow really cool unexpected optical illusion," it's "you're all fucking wrong and stupid idiots how can you see anything else dumby #teamgoldenrodandeggshellwhite"

Eh, don't let a few bad posters set the tone, #teamI'veseenitbothways

I'm shocked that the median reaction seems to be general lack of familiarity with the concept of an optical illusion in the first place

I'm not, it's a lack of familiarity with optical illusions in such a real world setting that makes this such a talking point, not a lack of familiarity with the concepts of optical illusions in general, I give my fellow posters more credit than that.

 

[StopMakingSense]

Maybe some people are only good at distinguishing almost black colors seeing gold and white, while others are only good at distinguishing almost white colors, seeing black and blue?

No, it's just a misinterpretation of the lighting situation in the scene, where people are seeing the dress as being lit by a cooler ambient daylight light source while in the shadow of the bright artificial light in back.

One could probably easily build a very similar looking scene with an actual white and gold dress.


One very interesting aspect of this is that the optical illusion relies on our learned subconscious understanding of how things like different white balanced light sources look in photographs, as opposed to some natural process of seeing.

 

[SenorArdilla]

Thanks a lot. Now I can't see the it as any other color but black and blue.

 

[Lord Error]

i'm shocked that the median reaction seems to be general lack of familiarity with the concept of an optical illusion in the first place

Color based optical illusions affect everyone generally the same way. This is not like that at all. It proves that there's some physical or neurological difference between the two groups of people - that's what makes it different and fascinating.

To me, it's clear as day from that photo that the black/blue dress is simply under some bright yellow spotlight. I bet if you white balance it by removing the yellow from that spotlight, it would be much more obvious what color the dress is.

 

[Escape Goat]

Ive seen it both colors. This must be what going crazy feels like.

 

[gutter_trash]

I went to my friend's desk after taking a leak; it was white and gold on his computer for a good 2 minutes then it changed colors on me again to black and blue

now back to my own desk, it is black and blue

 

[M0nochromatic]

The "white" fabric looks VERY paleish blue in the light, but the "gold" is very much a pastel faded gold color. I wish I could get it to flip, but it's a no go for me.

Edit: The 4,3 picture above is easy for me to flip by willing my POV to change, but that original pic is just an overexposed black/blue dress?

 

[Muffdraul]

The "white" fabric looks VERY paleish blue in the light, but the "gold" is very much a pastel faded gold color. I wish I could get it to flip, but it's a no go for me.

What about when you focus on the dress in the background in the lower left of the photo?

 

[Porcile]

It's a really overexposed, poorly lit image of a light blue and black dress which makes it light blue and gold (but it's actually black).

 

[Fusebox]

Ive seen it both colors. This must be what going crazy feels like.

My man, #teamflipflop #teamseenitbothways

 

[Number_6]

Saw white and gold. Tilted screen. Then blue and black. Untilted. White and gold again.

 

[Red]

It's a really overexposed, poorly lit image of a light blue and black dress which makes it light blue and gold (but it's actually black).

It's an overexposed image of a clearly black and blue dress that still looks black and blue.

 

[Booshka]

Look, a sail boat!

I feel like the guy that can't see it, because it never changes colors on me lol, always black and blue. I mean, I can see the yellow tinge in the black at the top, but it's still black, just affected by lighting.

 

[mrklaw]

People who see that blue shade as white may want to consider calibrating their monitors. It's like the most typical washed out photo of a blue color... I don't understand how's there even a discussion about this (and I fall for those checkerboard color optical illusions just the same as everyone else btw).


Considering that Photoshop color sampling shows beyond doubt that it's blue, I tend to think that some people must have terribly miscalibrated monitors (or some kind of mild color blindness when it comes to seeing the level of blue coloration)

But how do you explain four people standing around the same picture on the same monitor and two of them seeing white/gold, and two seeing blue/black? That was me earlier with my family. Me and my daughter see white/gold, my wife and son see blue/black.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

When I look at the shoulders, it's White/Gold.

When I look at the hem and bottom, it's Blue/Black.

 

[Costia]

These are the 2 interpretations I see:

The first is corrected for blue lighting (shade).
The second is corrected for yellow lighting.
What you perceive depends on what lighting you think it is.
Apparently the second is the correct one because the dress isn't in the shadow but is actually lit by a yellow spotlight.

 

[M0nochromatic]

What about when you focus on the dress in the background in the lower left of the photo?

The clothing in the bottom left of OP's pic is black and white. Its still faded blue and gold too me while looking at the black clothing as well. The mod abuse pic is black and blue for me.

 

[Lord Error]

But how do you explain four people standing around the same picture on the same monitor and two of them seeing white/gold, and two seeing blue/black? That was me earlier with my family. Me and my daughter see white/gold, my wife and son see blue/black.

Precisely what I said - there's some physical (retinal structure, as suggested by BBC video?) or neurological difference between the two groups of people.

 

[DECK'ARD]

But how do you explain four people standing around the same picture on the same monitor and two of them seeing white/gold, and two seeing blue/black? That was me earlier with my family. Me and my daughter see white/gold, my wife and son see blue/black.

Possible grounds for divorce, you have failed your wife and are leading your daughter astray.

 

[Fusebox]

Precisely what I said - there's some physical (retinal structure, as suggested by BBC video?) or neurological difference between the two groups of people.

You use the word precise, yet you follow on with an uncertainty.

 

[Porcile]

It's an overexposed image of a clearly black and blue dress that still looks black and blue.

get outta here

 

[thepotatoman]

No, it's just a misinterpretation of the lighting situation in the scene, where people are seeing the dress as being lit by a cooler ambient daylight light source while in the shadow of the bright artificial light in back.

One could probably easily build a very similar looking scene with an actual white and gold dress.


One very interesting aspect of this is that the optical illusion relies on our learned subconscious understanding of how things like different white balanced light sources look in photographs, as opposed to some natural process of seeing.

I'm aware of warm and cool lighting, but it'd have to be really intense to make something white look that blue. You'd basically need a special blue spotlight which is not something you'd assume in a photo like that.

Do people seeing white and gold maybe not know enough about the typical ways colors get messed up in pictures, and think the camera is adding a blueish filter?

I am very interested in what this means about how people interpret white balancing though. Personally when setting up tvs I'm the type that is always dissatisfied with whites looking way too red or way too blue, no matter what options I choose.

 

[Nafai1123]

But how do you explain four people standing around the same picture on the same monitor and two of them seeing white/gold, and two seeing blue/black? That was me earlier with my family. Me and my daughter see white/gold, my wife and son see blue/black.

Time to get your son DNA tested.

 

[Red]

get outta here

All I see on most screens is Costia's right picture. It looks almost exactly like that, a bit more washed out.