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The Dress

 
 
 
ksen

ksen

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So, what was the whole deal with that dress pic that was making the rounds last week?

My kids and I saw black and blue but my wife saw white and gold. Is this supposed to actually mean anything?

Is she just gaslighting us?
 
I have no idea what you are talking about. And since a have color-blindness I may find the dress to look pink.
 
Here is a reasonable discussion about it from SciShow - looks like he made it very quickly, but still decent:



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

It would be interesting to take that into account.

---------------------------------

How did buzz feed top Scishow?

and the prof comes with Latin, hardcore!

 
How this blew up really annoyed me for a number of reasons. For one, it doesn't fucking matter if the dress is black/blue in real life because in the *picture* everyone was buzzing about it's white/gold; which can be verified by checking the RGB values in photoshop or a similar program. For the record, I get a value of (R245, G239, B223) for the white("blue") and (R212, G180, B103) for the gold("black"). In other words, in the unedited image the white areas are more red or green than they are blue. And the gold areas are clearly not even close to black (for those who don't know, a value of R0, G0, B0 would be pure black).

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. The argument that the context of the picture can fool the brain into seeing it as different colors makes some sense, but... not really. The "it's a visual trick that's being played on your brain!" people are also full of shit, since even in the examples they give to show how this happens... it doesn't actually happen to any significant degree... and they have to mangle the original image pretty badly to get a very weak effect even then.

The other reason it annoyed me, which may seem hypocritical given my above rant:
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx9lX49B-LU&feature=player_detailpage[/YOUTUBE]
 
dystopian said:
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. The argument that the context of the picture can fool the brain into seeing it as different colors makes some sense, but... not really. The "it's a visual trick that's being played on your brain!" people are also full of shit, since even in the examples they give to show how this happens... it doesn't actually happen to any significant degree... and they have to mangle the original image pretty badly to get a very weak effect even then.
Click to expand...

Actually, the 'argument' that your brain creates a color representation based on the context is a psychophysical fact that has been known for some time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy

The human perception of color isn't a simple, one-to-one mapping from the 'wavelength' to 'color.' You can't guarantee that a person will perceive a particular color based on the RGB value of the image.
 
I seem to have the ability to make it change back and forth.

Though this applies only to the image in dystopian's post.
 
J842P said:
Actually, the 'argument' that your brain creates a color representation based on the context is a psychophysical fact that has been known for some time.
Click to expand...

Yes, however that argument doesn't make sense here because the only way for that to be made to work in order to show the dress as blue/black is to cut the dress *out* of the picture where it is surrounded by light colors and place it on a darker background. And even when that is done, the effect is fairly small in this particular case.


The human perception of color isn't a simple, one-to-one mapping from the 'wavelength' to 'color.' You can't guarantee that a person will perceive a particular color based on the RGB value of the image.
Click to expand...

Nonetheless the RGB value *does* answer the question of what color the dress is in the image; which was the whole point.
 
I'm not sure what to tell you dystopian. When my wife showed me and my son the picture we clearly saw the dress as being black with dark blue stripes and my wife swears that to her the dress is white and gold. :shrug:
 
ksen said:
I'm not sure what to tell you dystopian. When my wife showed me and my son the picture we clearly saw the dress as being black with dark blue stripes and my wife swears that to her the dress is white and gold. :shrug:
Click to expand...

To account for all variables, you should be looking at the original image in a full browser window: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/920/899/715.jpg - if you're on firefox like me, this should mean the photo I linked is flanked on both sides by dark grey (keeping in mind that darker colors flanking the dress are supposed to make it seem more blue/black). You should also be seated directly in front of your monitor and not looking at it from an angle.

I did just notice that the image I was working off of for the RGB values had actually been itself edited. In the actual for realsies original image, the "white" areas do have a somewhat higher Blue value; producing a light violet color. How someone can go from light-violet to seeing dark blue like people seem to be claiming though, is beyond me and they are obviously psychotic. The "gold" (more like brownish) areas are still clearly not even remotely close to being black however; not even the darkest parts are.

Personally, I think the issue here is less with there being some sort of profound optical illusion like certain other such illusions, and more with people's inability to properly describe the shit they see.

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):
color1.jpg


Or this one (being *actually* blue and black):
color2.jpg
 
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...
 
dystopian said:
ksen said:
I'm not sure what to tell you dystopian. When my wife showed me and my son the picture we clearly saw the dress as being black with dark blue stripes and my wife swears that to her the dress is white and gold. :shrug:
Click to expand...

To account for all variables, you should be looking at the original image in a full browser window: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/920/899/715.jpg - if you're on firefox like me, this should mean the photo I linked is flanked on both sides by dark grey (keeping in mind that darker colors flanking the dress are supposed to make it seem more blue/black). You should also be seated directly in front of your monitor and not looking at it from an angle.

I did just notice that the image I was working off of for the RGB values had actually been itself edited. In the actual for realsies original image, the "white" areas do have a somewhat higher Blue value; producing a light violet color. How someone can go from light-violet to seeing dark blue like people seem to be claiming though, is beyond me and they are obviously psychotic. The "gold" (more like brownish) areas are still clearly not even remotely close to being black however; not even the darkest parts are.

Personally, I think the issue here is less with there being some sort of profound optical illusion like certain other such illusions, and more with people's inability to properly describe the shit they see.

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):
color1.jpg


Or this one (being *actually* blue and black):
color2.jpg
Click to expand...

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

1024px-Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG
 
Axulus said:
dystopian said:
To account for all variables, you should be looking at the original image in a full browser window: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/920/899/715.jpg - if you're on firefox like me, this should mean the photo I linked is flanked on both sides by dark grey (keeping in mind that darker colors flanking the dress are supposed to make it seem more blue/black). You should also be seated directly in front of your monitor and not looking at it from an angle.

I did just notice that the image I was working off of for the RGB values had actually been itself edited. In the actual for realsies original image, the "white" areas do have a somewhat higher Blue value; producing a light violet color. How someone can go from light-violet to seeing dark blue like people seem to be claiming though, is beyond me and they are obviously psychotic. The "gold" (more like brownish) areas are still clearly not even remotely close to being black however; not even the darkest parts are.

Personally, I think the issue here is less with there being some sort of profound optical illusion like certain other such illusions, and more with people's inability to properly describe the shit they see.

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):
color1.jpg


Or this one (being *actually* blue and black):
color2.jpg
Click to expand...

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

1024px-Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG
Click to expand...
I would pose that one of the average differences between men and women happens to be a deeper intuitive understanding of colors
 
Axulus said:
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
Click to expand...

Indeed. Tile A is correctly perceived as being darker because it is the lighting that causes those two tiles to be the same shade of grey on the image (B is in the shade).
I think something similar is going on with the dress. The original photo (middle picture in that video still) looks to me like a black and blue dress. But I do see the colors of the image as very light blue in the blue bands and having a sort of goldish tinge on the black bands. But the image looks to me as an overexposed version of the clearly black/blue dress photo on the left, not a white/gold dress (like the one in the Salvation Army ad). The photo on the right looks even more overexposed. If you look at the background it can be confirmed as well I think.
I think the actual dress is black and blue which should put the matter to rest.
 
This subject was really a "Who the fuck cares?" moment on social media.

Apparently a lot of people did.

A case of 'someone's wrong on the internet', maybe?

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.
 
dystopian said:
How this blew up really annoyed me for a number of reasons. For one, it doesn't fucking matter if the dress is black/blue in real life because in the *picture* everyone was buzzing about it's white/gold; which can be verified by checking the RGB values in photoshop or a similar program.
Click to expand...
But the question isn't about what colours objectively are according to what the RGB values are, it's about what people *perceive* the colours to be.

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.
Click to expand...
Yet I saw the image for the first time being passed around a room full of people on someone's smartphone and different people, viewing the exact same image, on the exact same device, with the exact same settings, were split between seeing white and gold or blue and black. How can that be true if the colour it appears has only to do with the quality and settings of the device it's being viewed on?
 
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