What color/colour was that dress?

[Violet Bliss]

I saw it on this page this morning and it was blue and brown to me. Scroll down to the pic where it is viewed through some glass panes. There the lower potion shows much sharper images and more intense colours and I understand why some see black. White and gold I never see. Will try to look at it again in the evening when f.lux program changes my computer lighting.

 

[Mrs. P]

I think we can all agree that is a terrible, overexposed photo.

ETA: I will give props to the New York Times for writing an interesting nuanced story on the topic complete with a really nice graphic on why we may be seeing different colors: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/b...on-about-a-dress-and-the-world-weighs-in.html

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

This whole thing reminds me of the scene from Mallrats when the one guy is trying to see the sailboat hidden in the picture. One of those weird ones where you have to stare at it and relax your eyes and the image appears. The guy has been trying for weeks to see it. Then someone walks up and says..oh a sailboat. Cue freak out !!

I've noticed if I start looking at the dress from the top down I only see light blue and tan but if I start from bottom left up then the dress appears a bit more blue and black.

 

[karne]

Pale purple-blue and a dull bronze.

All I know is that my eyes hurt to look at it for too long.

 

[satine]

At first my eyes see blue and black.
Several hours after that I see gold and white.
Then minutes after that my eyes switch color.

You're the same as me Meoima It really is quite neat to switch back and forth between both. I wonder what other things I see on the internet that could be seen multiple ways depending upon the person :think:

 

[Interspectator]

Aaaaahh. What a crappy photo.
It's like one of those UFO sighting photos. Is it a UFO or Drone?

It does look 'white' and gold to me. Also, blue and brown. And if I look away and look at it again, it looks blue and black.
But then, I dream of pink elephants. So...

 

[Dee4707]

Thanks a lot, Guys, I am so confused right now.

 

[anyanka]

Whatever the color, no one had heard of this clothing brand until the last 36 hours. It's a masterful marketing ploy. I'll bet good money that the original posters or Tweeters who helped will this into going viral are either a third party PR firm or a couple of really savvy folks in that brand's marketing department.

 

[chezzu]

To be honest, I don't think it's a marketing ploy at all! I think the image was generated as a crazy accident. Many brain and vision experts were honestly amazed at the existence of a picture that is color-corrected /extremely differently/ by the brains of different people. According to an article I read following this dress debacle, 99% of everything we see are color-corrected the same way. I don't think the 1% is something an advertising agency can just generate on a whim, especially since science people took a bit of time to explain this phenomenon.

Science is great!

For the record, I see a deep blue and black and I can't see the white and gold people keep mentioning. Well, the gold, I can sometimes see. The white, never.

 

[Crossover]

Whatever the color, no one had heard of this clothing brand until the last 36 hours. It's a masterful marketing ploy. I'll bet good money that the original posters or Tweeters who helped will this into going viral are either a third party PR firm or a couple of really savvy folks in that brand's marketing department.

ITA. The dress was sold out in a twinkle, much thanks to the picture.

 

[Meoima]

You're the same as me Meoima It really is quite neat to switch back and forth between both. I wonder what other things I see on the internet that could be seen multiple ways depending upon the person :think:

Our vision of the world is so unstable lol.

 

[peg]

To a large degree, we interpret color based on surrounding colors and light levels. This whole thing reminds me of one of my favorite optical illusions, #16 in this link

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/crazy-optical-illusions#.clwlqQdxQD

Also, #19 is the same type of idea.

 

[peg]

Our vision of the world is so unstable lol.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of what we see depends on what details or context we're focusing on, and if what we see changes, it means we are able to see things from different perspectives and focus on different aspects of a situation.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Same. Pale baby blue and a bit of rusty gold.

The picture itself isn't taken in the best circumstances, so the color hue may be off because of brightness in the background.

The first time I saw the photo, I said pale blue with gold bits. But since then, I have seen other photos, and it did look Royal blue with black bits.

So I don't know anymore!

A girl I went to school with was getting really obsessed with it, and one of her friends sent her the following link to a story explaining why people are seeing different things:

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

It is heavy going, but it does seem to make sense.

By the way, on another friend's discussion the following photos were posted as replies:

Reply 1
Reply 2

EDIT: Just had to add in 2 more replies that I found on another couple of conversations about the dress:

Reply 3
Reply 4​

Incidentally, after all this discussion about the dress, my schoolfriend posted a photo of the Adelson Checkerboard:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...on.PNG/640px-Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG

Apparently Square A and Square B are exactly the same colour...

EDIT: just looked at the link that peg provided above, and the photo of the Adelson Checkerboard is on that page, along with the solution.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Barb]

I see white and gold. if we see something like this so different I dont wonder how we have so diferent opinions about figure skating.

 

[cheerknithanson]

I see white and gold. if we see something like this so different I dont wonder how we have so diferent opinions about figure skating.

But the color of the dress was a matter of fact that can be proven right or wrong. Figure skating has lots of opinions on how good a program was and if it moved you at all. You know? And that can't be proven right or wrong.

 

[sabinfire]

The first time I saw the photo, I said pale blue with gold bits. But since then, I have seen other photos, and it did look Royal blue with black bits.

So I don't know anymore!

I have not experienced this phenomenon where looking at this same picture at different times yields different results. I always see the same thing: light blue, brown/gold. I never see a clear white or black hue.

But as many of us have mentioned, the original photo of the dress was not taken in good lighting conditions and is washed-out with a bright background. Still doesn't explain why we see different colors in the same photo, though. I will accept the assertion that a better picture (or even the actual dress, when viewed with the naked eye in-person) may be black and blue (or, err, white and gold)?

As you said, I give up on this one!

 

[peg]

But the color of the dress was a matter of fact that can be proven right or wrong. Figure skating has lots of opinions on how good a program was and if it moved you at all. You know? And that can't be proven right or wrong.

But even though the dress can be proven to be a certain color, the way we perceive it depends on what we focus on and to what degree we ignore the background. The same holds true for figure skating. If you focus primarily on jumps, you will prefer strong jumpers. If you are very musical, you will weight the skater's musicality more heavily. And two people can see the same program and one will say the skater has a good connection to music and the other will say they don't, even though they are watching the exact same program.

 

[peg]

I have not experienced this phenomenon where looking at this same picture at different times yields different results. I always see the same thing: light blue, brown/gold. I never see a clear white or black hue.

But as many of us have mentioned, the original photo of the dress was not taken in good lighting conditions and is washed-out with a bright background. Still doesn't explain why we see different colors in the same photo, though. I will accept the assertion that a better picture (or even the actual dress, when viewed with the naked eye in-person) may be black and blue (or, err, white and gold)?

As you said, I give up on this one!

The lighting/exposure on that photo was beyond crappy. I saw a segment about this on the news, and the dress is actually a deep blue, pretty much a royal blue, though it never looked more than light blue to me. But I did find that by blocking out the background with my fingers, the colors would change. For example, when you block out the background in the link below, you can see the dresses are the same color, though they don't look it at first glance. If you were always seeing it as something in betwee, it could be that your brain just more effectively blocks out the background on its own

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/27/811973...plest-explanation-of-the-color-changing-dress

 

[borzaya]

Wow, that's interesting.
For me, it looks golden and white (I saw the picture at work at first). Then I looked at it on my home computer, where all the colors seem slightly darker - well, white does seem a bit bluish, and golden looks darker, but still it doesn't look like black...