Question: Is this dress white and gold, or blue and black?

How can two people look at a photograph of the same dress and see different colors?

Click to see the full-size dress image
It all started when a Tumblr user named Swiked posted a picture of a dress on the Internet on Feb 25, 2015 and asked, "Guys please help me - is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can't agree and we are freaking *** out." The internet nearly collapsed that night and the following day over the debate about the color of a dress. Many celebrities have tweeted their views. Millions of the commoners have joined in via Facebook and other forms of social media. The dress has been mentioned online more than 20 million times. The Ellen Show picked up on it, saying on Instagram that "From this day on, the world will be divided into two people: blue and black, or white and gold."

Answer: In reality, it is indisputably blue and black dress from a British company called Roman.

Click to see the full-size image

Source: www.romanoriginals.co.uk  

What is going on?

Original dress

First of all, the dress image that we see on swiked.tumblr.com is the image in the middle. The dress color of this image is actually seen by most people as pale blue-dark gold and quite different from the original dress which is blue-black. Apparently, Swiked's friend, who took the picture, is no photographer and the image she took is over-exposed and the lighting conditions have something to do with this. You can use Photoshop to brighten up the image to make it white-gold as seen in the image on the left or darken it to regain original color as seen in the image on the right. And indeed, several demonstrations on Internet and Youtube have shown that by tilting your computer screen, thus changing the brightness of the screen, can change the perception of the dress's colors

Now, the second question: Why two people look at the same image in the middle and see different colors?

One group see the color as white-gold resembling the image on the left and another group see the color as blue-black resembling the image on the right. Why?

Scientific explanation

There are two types of photoreceptor cells in the retina. Cone cells are responsible for color vision as well as eye color sensitivity; they are less sensitive to light than the rod cells and function best in relatively bright light, as opposed to rod cells that work better in dim light. At very low light levels, visual experience is based solely on the rod signal. This explains why colors cannot be seen at low light levels.
Cones are normally one of the three types, each with different pigment, namely: S-cones, M-cones and L-cones. Each cone is therefore sensitive to visible wavelengths of light that correspond to short-wavelength, medium-wavelength and long-wavelength light. In layman's term, the cones cells are color sensitive, specifically to red, green and blue.
Because humans usually have three kinds of cones with different photopsins, which have different response curves and thus respond to variation in colour in different ways, we have trichromatic vision. The three pigments responsible for detecting light have been shown to vary in their exact chemical composition due to genetic variation; different individuals will have cones with different color sensitivity. This may explain why people perceive the dress color differently.

Why the same person may see the dress color differently at different times or why do two persons see it differently ?

Color afterimage
An interesting effect occurs when staring at a particular color for too long. Such action leads to an exhaustion of the cone cells that respond to that color - resulting in the afterimage. This vivid color aftereffect can last for a minute or more. For those who see the dress as blue-black, if you have looked at the dress for a long period of time or exposed to blue color somewhere else, the dress color may turn into white-gold.

Stare at the center of the blue circle for 60 seconds, and afterward switch your view to dress below. The dress color within the view will turn into white-gold. If you do this repeatedly, the whole dress may also change its color.

Conclusion

There are three types of cone cells in the retina and each contains photopsin specifically for red, green or blue color. (Photopsins are the photoreceptor proteins found in the cone cells of the retina that are the basis of color vision.) Those who see the dress color as white-gold have fewer blue color-sensitive cone cells and/or lesser amount of the specific photopsin. The similar effect can be demonstrated by a prolonged exposure of eyes to blue color which temporarily deplete the specific photopsin.

Disambiguating #theDress

Best Illusion of The Year Contest 2015 Finalist
By Rosa Lafer-Sousa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

Disambiguating #theDress   View the video at www.youtube.com

Typically the visual system does a remarkable job of inferring the spectral-content of ambient light in a scene and discounting its contribution to color perception. But what if the relevant cues are ambiguous? Perhaps people perceive #TheDress differently because the lighting in the image is ambiguous (is it warm or cool?) and people’s brains make different guesses about it’s chromatic-bias. Here, I disambiguate the lighting conditions by embedding #TheDress in scenes containing clear cues to the illuminating conditions: the scene and model’s skin cue either a warm or cool light (the dress was not modified). Most viewers (~80%) conform to the cued percept.

The dress can be interpreted in two ways

The dress can be interpreted in two ways

Black and blue under a yellow-tinted illumination (left figure) or
Gold and white under a blue-tinted illumination (right figure).

Neuroscientists Bevil Conway and Jay Neitz believe that the differences in opinions are a result of how the human brain perceives colour, and chromatic adaptation. Conway believes that it has a connection to how the brain processes the various hues of a daylight sky, noting that "your visual system is looking at this thing, and you're trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis. ... people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black." Neitz remarked:
Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance... but I've studied individual differences in colour vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I've ever seen.

The Journal of Vision, a scientific journal about vision research, announced in March 2015 that a special issue about the dress would be published with the title A Dress Rehearsal for Vision Science. Scientific work is ongoing. The first large-scale scientific study on the dress was published in Current Biology three months after the image went viral. The study, which involved 1,400 respondents, found that 57% saw the dress as blue and black; 30% saw it as white and gold; 10% saw it as blue and brown; and 10% could switch between any of the colour combinations. A small number saw it as blue and gold. Women and older people disproportionately saw the dress as white and gold. The researchers further found that if the dress was shown in artificial yellow-coloured lighting almost all respondents saw the dress as black and blue, while they saw it as white and gold if the simulated lighting had a blue bias. Another study in the Journal of Vision found that people who were early risers were more likely to think the dress was lit by natural light, perceiving it as white and gold, and that 'night owls' saw the dress as blue and black.

Question: Is the color of her hair pink, purple, violet, or blue?

Sabrina Abu-Obeid is a 24-year-old musician living in Florida. When she recently dyed her hair violet, her boyfriend noticed that her hair changed color under different lighting. He then had her walk from the kitchen to the bathroom to get the change on video as shown below:

Click here to see the video on Youtube.

Answer and Explanation.

Yes, she did dye her hair violet. Therefore her hair will appear violet under the sunlight or bright white light in the kitchen. When she is out of the kitchen under dim white light, the color of her hair gets darker and turns blue. In other words, violet + black = blue. The dimmer the light, the bluish the hair color will be.

It appears that the light in the bathroom is a type of low pressure sodium vapor lamp which typically gives a distinctive yellow orange color as indicated here by the arrows. It is one of the most common lamps used in outdoor but can also be installed indoor. Her hair is pink-purple under brighter bathroom light and turns dark purple when she is out of the bathroom and is under dimmer light. In other words, violet + yellow-orange = purple.

Color-Changing Cake by CharlotteSometimes

Click here to see the video on Youtube.

Originally, the cake appears yellow, orange, and red. But spin the cake and suddenly those colors become purple, blue, and green.

CharlotteSometimes uploaded this YouTube video of a color-changing cake in November 2015. The video shows a cake with yellow, orange and red colors. However, when she spins the cake stand, the cake appears to change color like a chameleon and now have purple, blue and green colors.

The color-changing cake differs from the above dress and hair videos, which seemingly change colors in different lighting. In this case, the key is by airbrushing ridges of the cake frosting from one angle and then applying other colors at the ridges on the opposite side.

This isn’t video trickery, This is a real cake that really does change colors when you look at it from different angles. According to CharlotteSometimes the cake is 100% edible, it's just food coloring.

Other explanations.

www.reddit.com
Mellor88: "It's basically the same principle as "moving-image" toys.
The surface is like a zig-zag. All sides facing left are coloured with the first set of colours, and all side facing right coloured the opposite. The colour so see depends on where you stand."

Another reddit memeb explained."Use an airbrush and spray it from different sides with the different colors so that each color is only in one side of the ridges,"

See also comments from uproxx.com and www.sun-gazing.com

Techniques to make color-changing cake

Color-changing cake tutorial by CharlotteSometimes

Click here to see the video on Youtube.

Color-changing cake tutorial by Angela Hubert

Click here to see the video on Youtube.

More optical illusions at OPTICAL TOYS thekidshouldseethis.com

Can you spot what is wrong with this image?

Three women sitting on a park bench illusion. (Click to enlarge)
The optical illusion baffling the web in Oct 2016.

Can you spot what is wrong with this image?
At first glance, the photo appears to show three ladies having a sit down during a sunny walk.
But on close inspection, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong with the picture.
The odd photograph was shared on image sharing site Imgur and has left people scratching their heads in confusion.
On closer inspection of the picture, there three woman appear to be hovering in mid air - the seat on the bench is nowhere to be seen.

Can you spot what is wrong with this image?

Five men sitting on a bench illusion. (Click to enlarge)

This is how!
At first glance, it looks like these guys are hanging out on a bench in this sitting optical illusion. However, upon closer inspection, you can clearly see that there actually is no bench, and they aren’t sitting on anything at all. Instead, they’re leaning their backs against the wall with their knees bent in a sitting position. The way that most of them are leaning forward, much like many people do when sitting, makes this illusion even more difficult to figure out. It also doesn’t help that the bottom of the brick wall they’re leaning against looks a little like a bench from far away. (www.moillusions.com)

Is this man levitating?     Is Obama levitating?

 

Left: Is this man levitating? This viral image sent the internet wild when they thought this man was levitating.
Right: Is Obama levitating? Yes He Can!

Answers:         Perfectly Timed Photos
The man has long shirt and short legs. The spilled water next to him is illusively perceived as the shadow of his levitating body.
The image of Obama levitating is just the picture taken at the perfect moment. The shadow of teleprompter stand reinforces the illusion that Obama is on the air.

24 Magical Images That Prove Levitation Is Possible

 

Arianna Huffington Levitating   One of the 24 Magical Images That Prove Levitation Is Possible

View the 24 images of Levitation at The Huffington Post   Copy  

How to Do Levitation Photography

 

How to Do Levitation Photography   How to Do Levitation Photography

There are more ways than one to levitate. The first and most rudimentary method is probably the Jump Method.

What is wrong with this image?

A walker passes in front of the setting sun on Primrose Hill in London on Jan. 24, 2017. (REUTERS/Toby Melville)
Nothing is wrong with this image. Just a beautiful picture captured at just the right angle and at the perfect moment.
The Sun is not on the ground. It is near the horizon and therefore appears larger.

What is wrong with this image?

A participant of a horse-drawn sleigh race progresses through the snow in Rinchnach, southern Germany
Nothing is wrong with this image. Just a beautiful picture taken at the right time and the right place.

Woman’s designer bag, is it white or blue?

 

Is it white or blue? A woman’s designer bag has sparked fierce debate online in Oct 2016.

Left image: White designer bag
Taylor Corso, from Mississippi, US, uploaded a snap of her new Kate Spade tote to Twitter along with the caption: “Everyone say hello to my new baby.”
Social media users rushed to compliment her “nice white purse” to which Taylor replied, “It’s blue”.
Her seemingly innocent comment sent the internet into meltdown.
“Oh come on, please. It is clearly white,” wrote one baffled contributor, while another added: “It is white to me, sorry to ruin the fun.”
How are people seeing blue?” questioned one confused guy.
“I feel like I’ve lost all sense of what colour means now,” pondered one puzzled commenter.

Right image: Blue designer bag
Taylor responded to the hundreds of comments by posting a second photograph of the bag taken in a different light.
This snap showed that it is clearly light blue.
The official colour of the pouch, which features two short handles, gold hardware and a long strap, is Mystic Blue.
(www.thesun.co.uk)

These Two Images Are Actually Exactly The Same

These Two Images Are Actually Exactly The Same

The images you see before you are clearly different, one has dark red lips and the other, bright. Yet these images are, to all extents and purposes, completely the same.
How? Photoshop is the answer. The images are the same, it’s the backgrounds that are different. The lips and nails are filled with translucent red pixels.
When the image is placed on top of a dark background, the pixels are pronounced, showing the nails and lips to be a deep dark red. Place the same image on a white background and sure enough, the nails and lips are unrecognisably different.
(www.huffingtonpost.co.uk)

Go to Stanley Green’s blog to view a variety of changing colors.

Illusions of Brightness

"Light of chrysanthemums" The center of a flower appears to be bright.

Illusions of Brightness

These two illusions are made according to a design by the psychologist and artist Akiyoshi Kitaoka. The figure on the left is called “Morning sunlight”, and appears to have a bright light at the centre. The other one is called “Evening dusk”, and it seems to have a dimmer interior and a glowing corona. Both figures are actually equally bright, inside and outside. (www.sv.uio.no)