The Dress

[Archimedes]

I've just seen it on my phone, just now. The dress is clearly (on my phone) gold and white but her legs and arm are clearly black and blue with bruises. Odd to me no one has mentioned the bruises...

Are you talking about the image posted earlier in this thread? That's not the image people are talking about. That's a model with bruises on her face and legs posing with a similar dress for an anti-abuse campaign. The actual image that caused controversy was a different model wearing a similar dress in which her arms, legs, face, etc. couldn't be seen, must the dress itself. Nothing odd about it at all.

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This has got to be one of the biggest wastes of the internet for a while

You must be new to the Internet.

 

[Derec]

One thing I think is not accunted for is that people have different screens they are watching it on and are in different ambient lightings as well.

I do not know. By now, I have seen in on a variety of screens but it always looks the same to me - poor quality photo but definitely of a blue/black dress.

and the prof comes with Latin, hardcore!

But she also said "everybody has their own reality". Noooo. Everybody may have their own perception but there is only one reality. And the "rambling wrecks" who see it in white and gold should just admit they are seeing wrong.

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It always looked white and gold to me, and I didn't trust men's opinions of the color since many men have some form of color blindness, some of whom aren't aware they do.

Well the actual dress is black&blue, so ...

But what does any of this have to do with politics?

 

[ksen]

everything is politics

 

[Toni]

Are you talking about the image posted earlier in this thread? That's not the image people are talking about. That's a model with bruises on her face and legs posing with a similar dress for an anti-abuse campaign. The actual image that caused controversy was a different model wearing a similar dress in which her arms, legs, face, etc. couldn't be seen, must the dress itself. Nothing odd about it at all.

Ah, thanks. I was on my phone. The image I saw was the one for the domestic abuse campaign.

Carry on.

 

[bilby]

This is an abuse of the Internet; Everyone knows that the Internet is for pictures of women NOT wearing dresses.

 

[Canard DuJour]

My immediate reaction was "..well you can't really tell. The light bits have the bluey cast you get when a camera white-balanced for indoor light sees outdoor light (everything through the window looks bluey, the other way round makes everything inside in "synthetic" light look orangey-pinkish) and the dark bits look partially reflective so you're partially looking at a lighter colour of something in the environment you can't see directly."

I think that's - tacitly at least - something like most peoples' perception, except the picture is presented in a context of "WHAT COLOR IS THIS DRESS?!?!" eliciting one-word colour designations which are bound to vary. About as mysterious as boiled cabbage.

 

[dystopian]

You're too focused on the RGB values and not the individual perception of the colors.

Tiles A & B have the same RGB value but tile A is perceived as several shades darker than tile B

Yes, I am well aware of that optical illusion...

...this isn't that optical illusion; and I question the claim that it even is an optical illusion in the first place.

All I'm asking is whether or not the people claiming it is blue/black perceive those colors to be closer to the actual blue and black I posted, or closer to the RGB values I posted in hue/tint. If the former, they are monsters that need to be destroyed. If the latter, then it's a semantic issue.

 

[bigfield]

When I first encountered the photo, I thought everyone were losing their minds, so I imported the photo into GIMP and sampled the colours as someone else has also done, above.

Analysis of each colour:

The 'bronze': http://www.colorhexa.com/7b6d48

Definitely not black, or even close to black. The only way to know the trim is black (and not bronze or gold') is to see a different photo of the dress, such as the Amazon store's photo.

The 'lilac': http://www.colorhexa.com/b5c2e4

I was unable to see this colour as anything other than light blue. I have mild colour blindness due to optic neuropathy, causing me to see washed-out colours, but this still did not appear white.

I suspect that at least some of the people who see the white/gold combination have tetrachromatic vision, and that they can see see further into the UV spectrum, causing the colours to appear lighter.

 

[Derec]

When I first encountered the photo, I thought everyone were losing their minds, so I imported the photo into GIMP and sampled the colours as someone else has also done, above.

Well 2/3 of them definitely are.
And as I said before, the pixels themselves do not tell the whole story because that is affected by the lighting and the camera.

Definitely not black, or even close to black. The only way to know the trim is black (and not bronze or gold') is to see a different photo of the dress, such as the Amazon store's photo.

The pixels definitely aren't black (although there are darker and lighter patches). But it definitely looks to me like a poor quality picture of black bands, rather than a poor quality photo of gold bands. And I could not unsee it that way even before I saw other, well lit, photos of the dress.

I was unable to see this colour as anything other than light blue. I have mild colour blindness due to optic neuropathy, causing me to see washed-out colours, but this still did not appear white.

Again, to me this always looked like washed out blue, not white. Even the in the edited version of the photo with even worse white balance the dress doesn't appear white/gold to me - it looks like an even crappier version of the black/blue dress.

I suspect that at least some of the people who see the white/gold combination have tetrachromatic vision, and that they can see see further into the UV spectrum, causing the colours to appear lighter.

How would tetrachromatic vision affect the perception of a trichromatic image?

 

[ksen]

Which of the two images below has colors that are closer to what you see in the photo?

This one (the *same* values of the actual photo):

Or this one (being *actually* blue and black):

What I saw wasn't either of those but it was definitely more the second one than the first one.

 

[bigfield]

I suspect that at least some of the people who see the white/gold combination have tetrachromatic vision, and that they can see see further into the UV spectrum, causing the colours to appear lighter.

How would tetrachromatic vision affect the perception of a trichromatic image?

I need to correct my mistake: tetrachromacy in humans adds extra sensitivity in the red-green colour range, not in the UV spectrum.

It's possible that some people are more sensitive to red and green than others, this would mean that the 'lilac' colour could easily become a lighter and more neutral hue, i.e. an off-white.

On this chart, it would represent a perceived increase in the intensity of the red and green values

Yielding something like this:

However, Only 2-3% of women are hypothesised to be tetrachromats, so this does not explain it for anyone else, including Dismal who can switch between seeing either colour combination.

 

[Terrell]

This is an abuse of the Internet; Everyone knows that the Internet is for pictures of women NOT wearing dresses.

And cats. As to the dress, it looks light to middle blue & off-black to me.

 

[prideandfall]

personally i find the snappish self-congratulatory douchebaggery going on to be of far more interest than the buzz surrounding the picture itself (or even the picture itself and the schism in how people see its color)

i remember the day the story was posted, i read about in the AVClub website.
i pulled up the article, looked at the picture, and saw a white and gold dress - unquestionably, it was white and gold.
i discussed this with a coworker who saw black and blue, and amused ourselves for a few talking about how we were looking at the same thing on the same screen and seeing something totally different.
i sent a link to a friend, who also saw white and gold.
about 2 hours later i pulled the article up again, and i saw black and blue... and so did my friend to whom i had sent the link.
i'm still not entirely convinced that this isn't some kind of sorcery and/or an elaborate hoax involving several different versions of the same picture, but to all you assholes screaming about the RBG values or how it's "obviously this color", get over yourselves.

 

[dismal]

personally i find the snappish self-congratulatory douchebaggery going on to be of far more interest than the buzz surrounding the picture itself (or even the picture itself and the schism in how people see its color)

i remember the day the story was posted, i read about in the AVClub website.
i pulled up the article, looked at the picture, and saw a white and gold dress - unquestionably, it was white and gold.
i discussed this with a coworker who saw black and blue, and amused ourselves for a few talking about how we were looking at the same thing on the same screen and seeing something totally different.
i sent a link to a friend, who also saw white and gold.
about 2 hours later i pulled the article up again, and i saw black and blue... and so did my friend to whom i had sent the link.
i'm still not entirely convinced that this isn't some kind of sorcery and/or an elaborate hoax involving several different versions of the same picture, but to all you assholes screaming about the RBG values or how it's "obviously this color", get over yourselves.

As I understand it, the original version of the picture is somewhat washed out and just happens to be right on the border of where different people perceive the colors differently. As I mentioned, I can even switch it back and forth in my head sort of in the same way you can make 3d images appear from those dot diagrams. In the catalog the dress is clearly blue and black, and other versions that do not have just the right fading are not as close to the perception boundary of these colors and will not cause the same phenomenon.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is a very important issue because before this photo people didn't realize that colors look different under different ambient lights. Photographers across the globe never knew this.

My big issue with LCD screens is the problem they have repeating a similar color output from monitor to monitor.

 

[ksen]

This is a very important issue because before this photo people didn't realize that colors look different under different ambient lights. Photographers across the globe never knew this.

My big issue with LCD screens is the problem they have repeating a similar color output from monitor to monitor.

In my case we were all looking at the exact same screen and 2 of us saw black and blue and the 3rd saw white and gold.

 

[dismal]

This is a very important issue because before this photo people didn't realize that colors look different under different ambient lights. Photographers across the globe never knew this.

But that's not what this is about. This is about the same image appearing very different to different people in the same light.

 

[ksen]

what dismal said

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is a very important issue because before this photo people didn't realize that colors look different under different ambient lights. Photographers across the globe never knew this.

My big issue with LCD screens is the problem they have repeating a similar color output from monitor to monitor.

In my case we were all looking at the exact same screen and 2 of us saw black and blue and the 3rd saw white and gold.

I saw a white and gold dress that was being made slightly blue because of the poor lighting as some cameras will do. Red is gray and yellow white, but choose what is right. BAM!!!

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This also means that your screen settings can't make it appear black/blue unless you either have a shitty screen and are looking at it from a bad angle, or have the world's worst custom monitor settings. Anyone who has normal monitor settings who claims that the original unedited picture looks black/blue to them is full of shit.

I showed that picture to 13 coworkers using my iPad screen. Six of them said it was white and gold, seven of them said black and blue (which is what I saw too).

Same image. Same monitor. Same room. Viewing angle made no difference.

THAT is why the issue blew up the way that it did, because different people -- often sitting right next to each other -- looked at the exact same image and saw two completely different things.

At the risk of answering snark with snark, your not being aware of this is a potential indicator you have no friends and the closest thing you have in your life to genuine human interaction is that smartass youtube video you linked to.