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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Dress Of Many Colors--What Do YOU See?
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
So...on Thursday, a woman ("Swiked") asked for help on Tumblr, and posted a picture of a dress. She and her friends couldn't agree on the colors.
The whole thing's gone viral, sparking all sorts of articles--because there's a big difference in how lots of other people see the dress, too.
Here's the synopsis article, from Yahoo:
"Is This Dress Blue And Black Or White And Gold? Here's What The Experts Say."
How do you see it?
[ 28. February 2015, 09:38: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
Blue and gold.
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
Posts: 7354 | From: The Isles of Silly | Registered: May 2004
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
white and gold--and, on TV Thurs. night, it seemed like there might be a bit of light blue edging.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
Blue and black. On closer inspection, the black is dark gold.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
The BBC has a short video on it.
Certainly an interesting occurrence. Seems it depends on the background and the lighting. Hmm...
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
Posts: 7354 | From: The Isles of Silly | Registered: May 2004
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Mili
Shipmate
# 3254
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Posted
I saw it as white and gold first, but later on seeing the picture again it looked blue and black (or very dark gold and blue). Not I never know which combination I will see and once or twice it's changed while I'm looking at it.
Posts: 1015 | From: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I can only see white and gold, however hard I try.
But the actual dress is blue and black. Here it is.
People in our staff room who could only see one combination thought the others were winding them up saying they could only see the other. Not many could see both and switch between the two.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
So cameras do lie after all. And now for other late breaking news . . . . ![[Snore]](graemlins/snore.gif)
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
Posts: 7354 | From: The Isles of Silly | Registered: May 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
So cameras do lie after all. And now for other late breaking news . . . .
Nope.
It's not about the camera at all. It's about how we perceive colour and how the background lighting changes this differently for different people.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Blue and dark gold. The blue is paler though than it's actual colour.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
white and gold, though I can see pale blue when viewed on my husband's iphone.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
Blue (which is the colour of Tuesdays, as enny fule kno) and black.
Ian J.
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Have seen a number of pics and some footage. Some show gold, some show blue. Have still not seen dress. When I do so, I'll be back.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
I see that "colour" is a social construct.
("Colour blind" artist here. ![[Biased]](wink.gif) )
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Initially saw it on my laptop as blue and black and then on my tablet as white and gold and realised that the difference was the room light was on in the first and off in the second. So I turned the light on and the image switched to blue and black. Turned the light back off and I could make my perception of the image shift though both of those and blue and gold
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
White and gold, although if try to screen out the context I can see that the white is a blue.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
Blue & black, & can't seem to "get" white & gold from it however I try.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
So cameras do lie after all. And now for other late breaking news . . . .
Not in this case. People do not see coulors the same way. So when you describe a lawn as green there is no way of telling if another person who describes it as green sees the same colour as you do.
In the case of the picture both are correct. The dress is blue and black. But if you look at an analysis of a pixel from the picture it is gold and very pale orange. Some people compensate for the orange lighting and see blue and black, some don't and see white and gold. If you see pale blue you are compensating for the lighting but not enough.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
I saw it as white and gold on my i-pad; then saw it on tv and saw it as grey and blue.
M.
[ 28. February 2015, 13:46: Message edited by: M. ]
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
White and gold. I can see that the white is actually blue in the pixel sense, but I think my brain is compensating for the fact that it's backlit and therefore looks darker than it really is. I think those of us who see it as white and gold are doing this.
I can't see the black at all, nor how lighting can change black to the brownish-orange in the picture.
Interestingly my students (7th and 8th graders) came in yesterday at first period all talking about nothing else. "It's blue and black!" "It's white and gold!" When the bell rang and class began, I invited them to a brief discussion, and we voted. It was about 50% blue and black, 25% white and gold, and 25% undecided.
Then they took the math test.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
It's lilac and brown. The brown could at a pinch be gold I suppose. I don't know why anyone could think the rest was white and the "black" has been lost.
I floated this on Facebook yesterday and a friend said she thought it was pink and gold. It really depends on how your monitor is calibrated, and also on the white balance of the original photo.
[ 28. February 2015, 14:25: Message edited by: Ariel ]
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Sparrow
Shipmate
# 2458
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Posted
I can only see it as blue and black.
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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Posts: 3149 | From: Bottom right hand corner of the UK | Registered: Mar 2002
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
My brain immediately translated this as white and gold. Interestingly, I think this is because I got used to the 90's trend in film making of using that darkness- generated blue for various mood effects. ( see: "Smilla's sense of snow.", for instance.)
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
How long do we have to stare at this dress before the Martians control our brains?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
It's not about the camera at all. It's about how we perceive colour.
Miss Amanda hates to be the one to tell you, but we're looking at a photograph, not the actual object.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Drifting Star
Drifting against the wind
# 12799
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Posted
I saw it first on the BBC website, and it was unquestionably white and gold. I discovered, however, that if I focussed on a bit of white space below the picture, what I could see out of the corner of my eye was very clearly blue and black.
When I returned to the same picture later and looked at it directly it was blue and black - I assume the lighting had changed in some way, but there was no artificial lighting either time, and I was sitting in the same place using the same laptop.
I would love to know why this particular dress is causing such a difference in perception. I've never heard of this happening before, so it is presumably not common. Is it something about the specific colours, or the combination of the two colours?
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The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Heraclitus
Posts: 3126 | From: A thin place. | Registered: Jul 2007
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Amanda B. Reckondwythe: Miss Amanda hates to be the one to tell you, but we're looking at a photograph, not the actual object.
The issue here isn't that cameras lie, it's that they lie differently to different people. They have already experimented with different monitor settings etc. on this photo, and the outcome is the same: some people see black and blue, others see white and gold.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
Either way, it's 'orrible and I wouldn't wear it.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
It's not about the camera at all. It's about how we perceive colour.
Miss Amanda hates to be the one to tell you, but we're looking at a photograph, not the actual object.
It doesn't matter - people are perceiving the colours differently. This is what's causing the stir, not the photo itself, but our colour perceptions.
It is a huge stir too - worldwide.
Here is the story. It must be strange to be part of such a huge phenomenon when all you were doing is sharing a photo of a mother of the bride dress.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
This is all interesting. The first version I saw on TV (old style monitor), I saw white (or shadowed pale blue) and dark gold. I saw it the same way on a flat screen TV. Now, seeing it from GK's link here on my computer monitor it looks medium blue and black. I was definitely interested in a pixel analysis (thanks, Balaam!), but I still don't really get how the eyes and brain of different people observing the same image from the same source and from the same monitor can redefine saturated blue as pale blue and black as gold. First thought when they were talking about it on morning TV was that the image did indeed look pale colored and gold because of surface reflection on the dress itself. But the news people in the studio were looking at each other in disbelief because they, looking at the image from the same equipment, were coming to opposite opinions.
Well, the dress company is very happy because the dress sales have gone through the roof! ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
I saw (and still see) white and gold. Mrs Grouch sees blue and black and cannot conceive how I can see anything different.
Ain't life weird?
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
It's not about the camera at all. It's about how we perceive colour and how the background lighting changes this differently for different people.
And it's about the camera. Most people's eyes have three kinds of cones, that are more-or-less sensitive to reds, greens and blues. Most digital cameras have an RGB Bayer mask, producing pixels that are more-or-less sensitive to reds, greens, and blues.
But the spectra are not the same. Compare the spectral sensitivities shown here for the eyes and the camera. Notice that they are quite different.
Now, your sensing device takes the triplet of values (which looks like the integral of the product of these sensitivity curves and the emission spectrum of whatever object you're looking at) and converts that to a "colour response". In the case of the eye, this is your perception of colour. In the case of the camera, it maps its perception of colour onto (usually) a particular RGB colour space. When you subsequently look at the picture, you're not looking at the dress, you're looking at a camera-processed version of the dress, that has then been processed by the computer monitor. There's plenty of scope for introducing "error" here via choice of white balance and so on, which is entirely to do with the response of the camera and its post-processing and not to do with the eye.
Then there's colour metamerism. A whole range of different optical spectra will appear the same to a particular sensing device (eye, camera etc.) because that device converts the entirety of the spectral information to three numbers. The spectrum of light reflected from a particular object (in this case, the dress) is the product of the spectrum of incident light and the reflectivity spectrum of the dress. Things that look the same colour under one light can look different colours under another light. This is because they're not the same colour - they're metamers.
The third part of the confusion is the one that you indicate - that there is variation between the colour response of different people's eyes, and there is variation in the processing in the brain that turns that into a perceived colour. Your personal perception of colour is part of the story (and it's how different people can look at the same screen / paper and see different things) but it's not the whole story here.
Everybody who looks at the physical dress has seen it as blue and black.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Jack the Lass
Ship's airhead
# 3415
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Posted
My experience is the same as mousethief's. I can only see white and gold, although I can see a bluish tinge on the white which is presumably down to the camera not being able to handle the poor light. I can't see blue and black at all in that photo.
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"My body is a temple - it's big and doesn't move." (Jo Brand)
wiblog blipfoto blog
Posts: 5767 | From: the land of the deep-fried Mars Bar | Registered: Oct 2002
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
This discussion reminds me somewhat of the spinning dancer illusion. In this illusion, by representing the dancer as a silhouette, the designer has removed any information that distinguishes between the two possible directions of rotation. So the aggressive pattern-matching tool between your ears is left to extrapolate some real 3-D motion. Some people always see one direction, others see the dancer flip directions, some can make her flip at will.
Nobody, or everybody is wrong ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
There would be no confusion if someone was watching an actual physical dancer spinning, but you're not - you're watching an ambiguous 2-D projection. There is no correct answer.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Drifting Star
Drifting against the wind
# 12799
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Drifting Star:
I saw it first on the BBC website, and it was unquestionably white and gold...
When I returned to the same picture later ... it was blue and black - I assume the lighting had changed in some way, but there was no artificial lighting either time, and I was sitting in the same place using the same laptop.
Well I've found the reason for this! I can take the colours all the way from clear white and gold to clear blue and black by starting with the screen tilted towards me by about 10 degrees from the vertical, and moving it away from me to a similar distance from the vertical.
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The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Heraclitus
Posts: 3126 | From: A thin place. | Registered: Jul 2007
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
This is crazy. I've downloaded the photo, called it up in Photoshop and sampled the two colours. The closest equivalents are Pantone 652C and Pantone 7531. That's blue and brown.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
I saw (and still see) white and gold. Mrs Grouch sees blue and black and cannot conceive how I can see anything different.
Ain't life weird?
And that's the thing - the incredulity that someone else sees something totally differently.
(We should know that by now here on the Ship )
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I can understand the explanation, but one thing puzzles me - why this dress? I have a jumper which is primarily blue with black horizontal stripes and there are no photos of me wearing it in which anyone would see anything other than blue and black.
Blue and black isn't an unusual colour combination; why haven't photographs of other blue and black dresses previously revealed this? Could I set up a photo of me in my jumper with the lighting adjusted so that some people see it as a white and gold jumper?
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
I think the texture of the fabric might have something to do with how the camera picked up the lighting,
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
It is also the way the photo is adjusted. It is deliberately overexposed and there are one or two other adjustments on the go so that it hits precisely that part of our eyesight where there is most difference.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I interpreted it as white and gold, with the colour distortion coming from using the wrong exposure settings on the camera. I am reading the blue tinge as coming from using fluorescent lighting settings in natural light. (I've seen too many photos that have done that). But the reverse would also work, so it's a blue and black dress in a photograph that has been taken using the wrong settings inside.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
The trick is in the lighting. The foreground (that is, the woman) is lit in something similar tonorth light, maybe an hmi, whilst the background is lit in tungsten. Thus, everything in the foreground appears blue (including the woman's flesh tones: note the unnatural colour of her skin, whilst the background is a sort of overexposed yellow, typical of incandescent lighting. I'd light to bet there's a bit of flouro, led , or some other spectrally spikey light there, too. If you adjust your colour vision for the flesh tones, the dress is white, if for the background, blue.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
In other words, what CK said.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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moonlitdoor
Shipmate
# 11707
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Posted
I have a question for the people who see white. In the version of the picture linked to at the start of this discussion, there is some writing over the dress, and the word 'or' appears in white over the lighter of the dress colours.
I see a strong contrast between the colour of the writing and that of the dress. Do those who see the dress as white not see much of a contrast ?
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We've evolved to being strange monkeys, but in the next life he'll help us be something more worthwhile - Gwai
Posts: 2210 | From: london | Registered: Aug 2006
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Yes, I see that contrast. I know that I am seeing a shade of blue, but that I'm interpreting it as white with an added blue tinge from camera exposure settings for fluorescent lighting. What the camera does to compensate on the white balance under fluorescent lighting, which casts a yellow hue, is compensate by adding blue.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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