Do you see Black and Blue, or White and Gold?

Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldmod to Antique Memes Roadshow@lemmy.world – 227 points –
146

I can't do this again...

I know I'm wrong, but it's just staring at me gold & white. It's right there, clearly, and I don't know how to explain it to those who see it the other way.

I can't really See einher white and gold nor black and blue. It's more a baby blue and brownish to golden color for me. Can't really say it's black or white at all

I'm the same, looking straight at it all I can see is white and gold. Like a bright gold even, it's not even brown.

If I look at it in my peripheral vision it's very clearly blue and black though 🤷.

I just tried peripheral vision, and it's still solidly gold/white to me. Damn

Try zooming into the blue part on your phone and putting your phone up against a white wall

Ok, just tried. It looks like white with a shadow on it, or maybe off-white.

I've just come back to look at this after your comment and it is now solidly blue and black to me!

I've turned the lights down in the room I'm in so that may have had an effect?

I was able to see it blue and black one time, I'm not wasting my time trying to see it again, lol

If I remember from the first time this came around it had a lot to do with how your eyes interpreted the lighting in the image. Try putting it away then looking at it in different light settings and often it allows you to see the other one.

I've definitely seen it on numerous devices in various lighting since it became a thing, and it just looks the same to me.

Only once in my life did I see it gold and white

I’m the opposite.

Look at the darker side and tell me you don't see black and blue

My brain is broken. I still only see white and gold.

Well, afaik it was confirmed to be black and blue. Whatever, you may see it gold and white because your brain focuses more on the lighter parts. Try covering them with your hand or something

I've tried so many things from squinting to covering parts of the picture to adjusting the light in my room. I know this dress is blue and black because I've seen it while not being over exposed. I just can't get my brain to recognize it any other way than gold and white in this picture.

Yeah I just don’t understand this as well, even if the dress was confirmed black and blue, where the heck are those colors in the image? The blue I can still go with if using color picker but the gold is clearly there, even color picker says it’s gold from the image alone. Doesn’t mater what the real dress is colored in if the picture conveys a different story. I see also mostly white and gold and no matter what can’t change it besides looking at the other images of this dress.

Black material isn't perfect and still reflects light, given there's a very yellow light source and the picture is overexposed it is showing the black as a "gold" due to the yellow tint.

afaik it was confirmed to be black and blue

I do believe it actually was black and blue, but I find it very hard to believe that anyone would perceive the way it is presented in this picture, with that lighting and level of overexposure, as black and blue.

Even looking at the RGB values of individual pixels, they are distinctly brown/gold-ish and a pastellish faded out purple.

The actual dress is black and blue. The pixels in that image are a VERY light blue and like a beige type color. You can drop it into that color picker app and see.

Basically the pic is fried to hell and back.

Yeah couldn’t agree more, even highlighting the dark pixels does nothing in python if they are closer to the pure black hex value. Simple RGB values of this image is just not black but at least some sort of light blue/blue if not white.

Yeah, I've tried the tricks, and I've seen other pictures of the actual dress, but I still see dark yellow and light blue / gray. Which, to be fair, are the actual color values in the image.

I don't think it's possible to force your brain to see it one way or another. I did see it as white and gold once but it was only for a split second and only after staring at it for a long time. One of my friends tried to prove it was white and gold by messing with the white balance in Photoshop, but that did nothing for me. I'd be surprised if it worked by just covering parts of the picture, it might be a more external lighting perception trick.

I wonder if this picture is showing how many of us need to adjust our monitors...

I only saw white and gold before i did that and now i can only see black and blue.

One method to attempt to force the change is change the screen brightness and ambient light situation. If its bright where youre looking at, change to a dark room or vice versa

whoever get this confused has never fix the white balance of a picture's color temperature

Is it a crime story or a story about the dress? I can't really tell. Like I think it's about domestic violence, but then I read another paragraph and then all I can see is about the dress, and then it changes back again.

It seems obvious

Literally looks like two different colored dresses. I know that's the real color, but I just cannot see it. Shrug.

Right? Thats always been my take.

The picture's exposure/brightness whatever has been so overadjusted that the black and blue looks white and gold.

You can tell me over and over that its "actually black and blue", and even show me the real dress beside it, but I cannot for the life of me shift my view on the original picture and somehow view the dress as black and blue.

Wow, it switched for me in the time it took me to scroll down the page. That's new.

Why does the right one not have sleeves?

Neither do, that’s an accessory jacket sold along with the dress.

The original photo was for bridesmaid dresses, being sent out as an approval picture or something.

Looks like they were considering adding a short sleeved jacket to the ensemble.

I can't not see white and gold. The white just looks like it's in shadow.

since when are shadows blue

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20935843/

Also:

Shadow Color

In real life, shadows often appear to be a different color than the area around them. For example, outdoors on a sunny day, shadows can appear to be tinted blue. The shadows appear blue because the bright yellow light from the sun is blocked from the shadow area, leaving only indirect light and blue light from other parts of the sky.

So basically, if the light source has a yellow color to it (which many often do), the shadows can appear blue.

I see blue and gold. Am I having a stroke?

1 more...

Fun Fact: The same day, February 26, 2015, the Interwebz blew the fuck up about this goddamn dress, some Llamas escaped from captivity and we were all equally captivated by their chase for hours, it was an amazing 24 hours online

The colour picker continues to tell me that it is a light shade of blue, near white, and a medium shade of brown, similar to gold.

https://imagecolorpicker.com/en for those seeing white and gold. Also the screen you're looking at it on matters so much.

Edit: I did find a neat bug with DarkReader on though. It reads the white pixels as black with the magnifier on the right. Even turning off it's still pretty blue and white... Apparently it actually pulls the color judging by what your screen shows though... which is pretty neat all considering. The crosshair is on the large white empty space to the right of the large black stripe in the middle.

DarkReader off: https://i.imgur.com/0ofjl8W.png

DarkReader on: https://i.imgur.com/OpcDGCH.png

So I tried this and even https://colors.artyclick.com/color-name-finder/ but it will find only brown/gold and light blue/blue/white depends where you focus it on. This image itself contains no black pixels simple as it is.

See I get nothing but blue and gold... Which is the entire crux of the illusion lol. Your brain just makes up for the color shift due to previous images it's seen with washed out saturation due to ISO / artificial light boost.

https://i.imgur.com/iJBt2Mj.png

Seems to me a color picker confirms white and gold. Although the white has a bluish tint, some areas don't even have that, and are light grey. There is no doubt the gold (black) is different tones between brown and yellow, which is the RGB you'd expect for a gold color.

I don't get the same at all. Can you send a screenshot? This was the easy hack to show the image is literally Blue and Gold/Brown. The rest is the entire point of the optical illusion.

https://i.imgur.com/iJBt2Mj.png

I just saved your image and loaded it into GIMP, and the correct value for the brownish color shown as selected is RGB(256): 78,66,39. (decimal) The same value for both the selection in the read square, and the one left of the RGBA value that is wrong. Brown and yellow colors are dominated by red and green, the RGB value shown in your picture can't possibly match the color shown as the selected color.

The value shown in your software is wrong.

I am no longer able to see the white and gold glory :(

Same here. When this was new I had 10 tabs open with articles about this dress, they were all white and gold. Then all of a sudden on the 11th tab I saw it as blue and black and thought it was a different picture. Went back through the other 10 tabs and they were all blue and black now.

I was able to see white and gold once more a few days later, but it was short lived and I haven't been able to see anything else but blue and black for years now.

I was convinced that half the internet was just lying back then, like one big global troll fest, especially since everyone I knew saw the same white and gold as I did. But just now my wife suddenly saw it as blue and black and she thinks I'm crazy, even though we both saw it as white and gold back in the day. So now I finally know that people were telling the truth.

It is important to remind the audience that the author of this picture heavily abused his girlfriend/wife

Craziest part is that it was used in a famous campaign for domestic abuse several years before the husband in the wedding got arrested for domestic abuse.

I see black and blue with a yellow over wash because of lighting.

To see white and gold in shadow, I have to remove all context prompts, like strip out the background and all lighting artifacts.

I just can't see the white and gold in context. Too many years of colour correcting photos.

I can't see white and gold no matter what, I am ever-so-slightly color blind (supposedly) so maybe that's part of it?

Logically I realize the "white" is bluish-gray, especially if I stretch it out to the edges of my phone so I'm not influenced by the backlighting in the photo. But I held it up next to my black cat and the "black" isn't even close. At most it's brown, which is what gold looks like in shadow. Compare it to your background if you're on night mode, or your text if not. No black there.

Black garments aren't ever perfectly black, vanta black is as close as it gets, but depending on the lighting "black" materials will absolutely reflect some light. The dress is actually blue and black and the reason people see it differently is to do with how our brains try to colour correct for lighting conditions.

So are you saying it's being hit with a strong yellow light? Why then is the black and white thing on the far left still showing as black?

It’s on a clothes rack, it’s more obscured from the light source than the dress which is being held up for the photo. See the top right of the picture? Real bright yellow.

Bottom right of the picture? White or off-white surface, I can’t quite tell if its carpet or not.

This picture was taken in the afternoon facing a window in the direction of the setting sun.

If you’re seeing white and gold your brain is assuming a cold blue light like morning or fluorescent lighting and skewing the colours.

No, my brain is assuming a bright yellow light coming from behind, leaving the front of the dress in shadow.

So about an hour ago I was showing this to my wife, we both saw white and gold and thought this is silly. But now somehow I am seeing blue and black and she is still seeing white and gold. Fuck me.

I see the defendant guilty of attempted murder and considering the severity of the crime I hereby sentence the defendant to 15 years in prison.

For half a second when I was scrolling I saw white and gold, but now it's blue and black. I can't flip it again.

Same here. White and gold for a moment, then blue and black.

Still white and gold even after all these years, though I did see blue and black once, but that was with the corner of my eye then.

Just depends on what lighting your brain perceives it. I see it as black and blue so clearly in the thumbnail.

When opening up the full image, it's white-and-gole. Light properties and additive/subtractive colors be wilding.

It's still amazing to me how much this screws with people. That not everyone experiences things the same way shouldn't be a hard concept.

I see brownish gold and bluish white. I can never make the gold entirely black nor the white entirely blue.

White and gold obviously.

Scrolls down....reads some comments....scroll back up.

WTF, how did that happen. Now it's black and blue.

Always been black and blue for me. Never been able to see it as white and gold.

I've never seen black, only gold and white or gold and blue

I’m seeing gold and white. My eyes aren’t great, curious if people with astigmatisms or something are more prone to seeing it one way over the other.

Me and my gf are looking at the same picture on the same screen. I see gold and white and she sees black and blue. What the actual fuck?

I see tremendous sadness everywhere I look, overtaking the entirety of humankind and sending us into a spiral towards the vast, infinite void of the unknown; the final, peaceful reprieve we struggle to prevent.

Jk white and gold.

Edit: now blue and gold. I hate this picture sometimes.

So I can only see white and gold, but if I angle my phone away from me and look at the side, it turns black and blue. When I straighten it out again, back to white and gold.

I generally see the black and blue, but I find it pretty easy to see the white and gold too if I focus on the top part of the image.

I've seen both. Blue and black more though

Ahh, the black and white dress, good times.

It's clearly a white and gold dress under a somewhat blue light (probably sunlight through clouds or maybe a "daylight" bulb).

If you see differently, I strongly recommend a colour blindness test, it could change your life for the better! <3

It's funny that you say this with such strong conviction, because the dress was in fact black and blue, and due to the way the brain perceives color, it can be interpreted as white and gold. It has nothing to do with color blindness.

I looked at it an hour ago, and all I could see was white and gold. I picked up my phone now, and it's blue and black. Your brain is going to interpret it based on the context within which you've been in, and what the local lighting conditions are.

FWIW, as others have mentioned, the actual dress was, in fact, blue and black.

It's clearly white and gold to me. I showed my son and wife and they need to get their eyes checked because they both see blue and black. I could see my wife trolling me, my son too, but I asked him before I asked her, and he's too young to have seen this the last time it came around.

I'm looking at the image on a very high quality OLED screen. On an OLED, it's very obviously NOT black. You can see the top of the dress in the light and it's not at all black. The black on my screen makes that incredibly obvious. Who cares what it is in real life, I'm not judging that, I'm judging the image and black is not a part of the dress, in this image.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/14/man-mother-in-law-blue-black-dress-viral-charged-trying-to-kill-wife

The Guardian's image is black and blue. The image in this thread IS NOT. My eyes may look red in a photo, that doesn't mean they're really red. An image is not a perfect reflection of reality.