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What color is this dress?

Last posted Feb 28, 2015 at 02:34PM EST. Added Feb 26, 2015 at 08:33PM EST
67 posts from 43 users

What the fuck? My sister just showed me this pic. She says its white and gold but I see blue and black. Now people here are saying it's white and gold.
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PICTURE!??

Well we have an answer now… sorta. Here's the Amazon picture of that item:

Blue and black. Case closed, right?
Except the fact is that in a photograph- in other words, what we're actually looking at (ceci n'est pas une robe) things like lighting/shadow and the settings of the camera can easily cause wild variations. Not to mention what you can do with said photograph on a computer, as No One demonstrated. So the "pure" color of the object is actually completely irrelevant in this discussion. What we're talking about is people seeing completely different things- akin to a group in a theater watching a movie where afterwords, one half of them say it was in black and white and the other half profess that it was in living color. As far as I know, this phenomena is undocumented and without an explanation.

Something else somewhat related and interesting but not entirely related to this specific issue that I found while researching- even though we virtually always agree with the defined color scheme, it's very likely that we don't actually perceive them the same way at all.

Ah, the tumblr controversy reached up to here, has it?

The white and gold/blue and black difference is just the fault of brightness and contrasts in the images and what we see on the computer. Here is proof. What I want to know is what color the dress is in real life; no way that same illusion gets in the way of real life, can it?

Last edited Feb 26, 2015 at 10:29PM EST

0.9999...=1 wrote:

Well we have an answer now… sorta. Here's the Amazon picture of that item:

Blue and black. Case closed, right?
Except the fact is that in a photograph- in other words, what we're actually looking at (ceci n'est pas une robe) things like lighting/shadow and the settings of the camera can easily cause wild variations. Not to mention what you can do with said photograph on a computer, as No One demonstrated. So the "pure" color of the object is actually completely irrelevant in this discussion. What we're talking about is people seeing completely different things- akin to a group in a theater watching a movie where afterwords, one half of them say it was in black and white and the other half profess that it was in living color. As far as I know, this phenomena is undocumented and without an explanation.

Something else somewhat related and interesting but not entirely related to this specific issue that I found while researching- even though we virtually always agree with the defined color scheme, it's very likely that we don't actually perceive them the same way at all.

I don't think that's the dress…

Last edited Feb 26, 2015 at 10:32PM EST

Cecaelia Girlie wrote:

I don't think that's the dress…

It is- the lace designs are exactly the same, and the thing doesn't come in another color.

Sorry Onion Syrup, but that video doesn't answer the question. People are looking not only at the same image, but from the same screen, and still seeing a different scheme.

Rylade475 wrote:

Many say White and Gold, others say Black and Blue, few say it's the lighting that changes the color,
I say

I'm getting tired of people coming into threads and saying they don't care when they could just ignore it.

On topic:

My guess is blue and black.

Holy hell. I thought people were just trolling 6 hours ago. 6 hours later and this is the new cancer on Facebook.

Anyways (for the record) it has always been black and blue. The only time the dress is white and gold is if you invert the colors…

That's a very interesting optical illusion. Looking at whole image from the top down, it looks white and gold. Looking at the bottom half of the image, it looks blue and black.

Colors from pixel selections:
#8595c0 – "white" is actually a baby blue
#7b6d48 – upper "gold" is actually a brown. This part of the dress is transparent, so this color includes skin tone.
#6d5d4d – lower "gold" is actually a grey.

The bright glare at the top of the image probably influences how the mind processes it, but I still see white and gold after cropping it out.

My mind seems to assume the two "gold" colors are the same. Cropping out the transparent part of the dress makes it easier to see it as blue and black.

I got interesting results from being nearsighted and taking off my glasses. The blurry version is obviously blue and black, with the blue being a dark blue like the original dress.

It is easier to see blue and black when looking at the screen at an angle. It is easier to see white and gold when looking straight on.

My first thought was white and gold. Here is why:

My eyes literally see blue and gold. However, in my mind I am assuming that the blue tinting is actually a camera affect caused by shading in the room

This is possible due to the fact that the background is in broad daylight while the dress appears to be in shade and facing away from the light

Cameras exaggerate contrast so the dress should have a thrown-off shading in the photo when its actually different IRL

Knowing this, you can use you imagination to mentally compensate for the shading, the resulting image gives you white and gold.

I believe the people saying white and gold are doing this.

The people saying blue and gold are assuming that there is no dark shading. They could be looking at it the other way: It is a dark blue dress in that very bright light, thus washing out the colors as opposed to a white dress in shade

Or they could be thinking that the photo is perfect and what you see is literally what you get

So this is a matter of interpretation. Black with white stripes or white with black stripes. Whether you decide it is a white dress in shade or a blue dress in light may come down to which brain hemisphere is more dominant, or something.

As for those seeing other colors than blue/gold/white/brown/black….no damn clue….are they high?


@0.99999


That's quite clearly blue and black,but that's a far, far deeper hue than what the OP's image shows. If that's the dress, then the camera washes out colors very badly. However, I guess that would just confirm what No One pointed out. Perhaps then it is Blue and Black and the camera used too much brightness and not enough contrast, despite what my brain wants to think

Last edited Feb 27, 2015 at 06:24AM EST

every monitor I see this on, the color's different and that's so weird

i mean on my ipod it looks blue and black, and on my laptop it looks white and gold now

Curious by Foxy's post, I just looked at it on my Android phone.

It's very clearly blue and black on my phone. No fucking doubt

My laptop shows it bright enough to look like white and gold sitting in shade

So yea, might want to consider this being a technical issue more than a mental issue

Last edited Feb 27, 2015 at 06:29AM EST

@lurker

I think I have it least part of it figured out. It shows up differently on different screens. May depend on your color and brightness settings

Some devices show the real color saturation: blue and black.

Other devices show the image much paler and less saturated which drowns out the color just enough pass for white and brown in shade

I wish I could take a screen shot on my phone and a screen shot on my laptop and show the MASSIVE difference there is. But that wouldn't work

I believe its blue and black. My phone shows the dress couldn't possibly be white despite looking white on the kaptop.

There's more to it. Like the people disagreeing when looking at the same screen. but it's really complex

Last edited Feb 27, 2015 at 09:16AM EST

Oh, My. God. This went amazingly viral. Every blog is covering it. It was even in the news!

You really should check this link

And guise, guise…

guise…

… I can ONLY see blue and black now.

Even on my laptop where I first saw it, looking at the original image, it's blue and black. I cannot see white and gold anymore on ANY image. I'm fucking freaking out!

Before it was white, with a blue tint from shadow….now its just Black and Blue with the brightness in the image tuned up.

Because I now know that it is truly black and blue, my eyes are no longer deceived by the optical illusion of the contrasting hues

After looking at this fucking dress last night and all day today I've only seen white and gold. No matter what I did my mind could not wrap around the idea that it was a blue and black dress. It was honestly freaking me out a bit. But then finally, FINALLY, about a half hour ago I looked at it again and suddenly it clicked that it was blue and black. So now it's like I'm some higher being that can simultaneously see both.

Despite the relatively easy answer to the question of how the photo got the dress to look white and gold, I think there's a lot of interesting science behind how some people could only see it one way or the other. Color theory is crazy, man.

Skeletor-sm

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