What color is the dress?

AbbysMom

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Most of you have probably already seen the dress debate. It pretty much owned the Internet yesterday. For those that haven't:


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/b...out-a-dress-and-the-world-weighs-in.html?_r=0


When I saw this yesterday it was clearly white and gold. Twice today though, I have opened a link about it, then scrolled down to read the article and when I scroll back up the dress is then black and blue. It's crazy.


What colors do you see?
 

fhicat

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Oh god not you too.

Photoshop says it's blue, so I'm sticking with blue. It always looked daylight blue to me.
 

Willowy

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I guess I don't understand how anyone can see it as white, unless you assume it's in the shade so it looks blue :dk:. I see blue and kinda brown-ish gold-ish black.

xkcd attempts to explain the optical illusion but I still don't see any white! Maybe lighter blue but not white:

 

di and bob

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Come on!!!!! I looked at the dress on TV this AM and it was clearly white and gold. Then when I went to the above link and it was white and gold. But when I scrolled back up it was black and blue!!!
 

jcat

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The first time I saw it it looked white and gold, but when I looked again it was light blue and brown. :lol3:
 

misterwhiskers

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Looks gold and white to me. Guess it might depend on people's monitor?
 

Draco

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I still firmly believe that image changes every so often to make people see different things, lol. Someone's tricking us!!
 

natalie_ca

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Looks gold and white to me. Guess it might depend on people's monitor?
And the lighting where the picture was taken.  You can take something pure white and put it into an area where there is shadow or a reflection cast on it, and the white will seemingly take on a different colour, but it's only the environment making it look that way, the pure white would still be pure white if removed from that environment.

I think this is the most stupid debate I've seen online in a very long time.  I really don't care what colour that dress is. All I know is that it's bloody ugly!  LOL
 

furmonster mom

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What it comes down to is what information is in the image capture.

If the image capture is blown out because of flash and bad white balance, then the digital information is incomplete.  Photoshop efforts are then suspect, because they are based on bad information.

On the flip side, it could be a good picture, but photoshopped to look blown out.  In that case, the information is there, and corrections can be made to turn the picture back to what it's supposed to be.

The lesson here is... it's the internet, and photoshop is king.

Here's a fun little way to test your color perception.... color test    The lower the score, the better.

 My score: 3
 Female
 40-49
 
 

cat nap

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I see blue and gold dress.  Kind of darker shade towards the bottom, but not black.
....
.....

Here's a fun little way to test your color perception.... color test    The lower the score, the better.

...
...
Colour test was fun, but I will want to try it another day, to see if it gets worse or better.   
   
     (maybe I need my eyes examined....like pronto.) 


My score: 11

female

40-49
 

Willowy

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What it comes down to is what information is in the image capture.

If the image capture is blown out because of flash and bad white balance, then the digital information is incomplete.  Photoshop efforts are then suspect, because they are based on bad information.

On the flip side, it could be a good picture, but photoshopped to look blown out.  In that case, the information is there, and corrections can be made to turn the picture back to what it's supposed to be.

The lesson here is... it's the internet, and photoshop is king.
But it can't really be blamed on Photoshop. . .people are looking at the SAME PICTURE and seeing different things! I can't figure it out really. It's not even something I would thought could be an optical illusion, although there are some very interesting color illusion sites I've seen.

One thing I saw said that different people have different numbers of blue receptors in their eyes. I guess that could explain it because most optical illusions I can see both ways but I can't make my brain see white on that dress :tongue2:.

I couldn't do the test---I'm on a phone and couldn't figure out how to drag and drop the squares!
 
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furmonster mom

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It's interesting that there are three pictures in that article, but no indication of which one is the original.  If you look at the background in them, you can see how the colors/hues go from blown out to intensified.  Again, it comes down to manipulation.  I can see how, if the middle image is the original, it could be interpreted in either direction. 
 

sonnyvincent

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To me honestly it's obvious a filter was used on the picture that was distributed on the internet. All the colors looked washed out, with the black appearing a brownish color and the blue lighter than it probably was (going by the background colors as well). Because a filter was obviously used my immediate conclusion was black and a darker blue (AND I WAS RIGHT) and i tried all the recommended tricks to see it as orange and white and never could. My nephew (age 6) said blue and grey. It's just kind of crazy to me how the same picture can be seen so differently by people, but I guess that's how some of us end up Democrat and some of us Republican lol. I found the debate interesting but I knew I was right lol.
 

Willowy

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Eh, I doubt they did anything so complicated as using a filter. They didn't mean to start a huge internet controversy :D. They were just posting a picture of a dress and everybody saw something different. I think it was just in bad lighting with probably a camera phone.
 
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