Can you solve the mystery of the Gold/Blue Dress?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/help-am-i-going-insane-its-definitely-blue?bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgp#.og3O9MzQG

by TruthSHIFT • 11 years ago

9 13 11 years ago

TruthSHIFT• 11 years ago

Ok. My wife and I can only see White and Gold. However, she has several friends that insist that the dress is Blue and Black. I'm trying to come up with possible technical reasons for the discrepancy. My best guess is that AMOLED displays are displaying the colors differently than conventional displays. Can anyone test?

andrewfong3• 11 years ago

Nope. My buddy and I just looked at the same screen and saw different colors.

It's probably a genetic quirk?

granjef3• 11 years ago

photoshop color picker says dress is Blue and Dark brown.

davidbarker2• 11 years ago

I see it as blue and dark brown, too.

sepeth• 11 years ago

does that mean camera have seen it as blue?

davidbarker2• 11 years ago

This appears to be the store that sells the dress (listed as blue).

http://www.romanoriginals.co.uk/invt/70931

jboggan2• 11 years ago

Is it possible that different images are being displayed randomly depending upon cached media or something strange like that? I don't favor a physiological explanation, this seems like a technical issue.

andrewfong3• 11 years ago

No, you can have people in the same room look at the exact same image on the same screen at the exact same time and describe vastly different colors. I've been trying this with my co-founder. We've tried different monitors, angles, screen, and so forth. I consistently see white/gold. He sees blue/black. Physiological is the only explanation that makes sense to me.

jboggan2• 11 years ago

Ok, I believe you, I have pulled in several coworkers who haven't seen it yet and I am convinced that they are not trolling me. Half of us see white/gold (including myself) and half see blue/black. We are arguing.

darkmethod• 11 years ago

My wife insists that it is white and gold. And I see blue and a light brown.

hcarvalhoalves• 11 years ago

It's a white dress with golden/brown accents lit by a cold blue light from behind the camera.

That messes with people's perception of color since the store seen in the background is lit by a warm light. People who see it as blue are intuitively correcting for the light of the background.

It's a simple optical illusion easy to replicate:

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/col-context/index.html

sgwealti• 11 years ago

If I stare at it and let my eyes go unfocused it starts to look blue and black but when my eyes are focused it look white and gold. Also for me the distance from the screen matters. Close up it looks white/gold and far away it looks blue/black.

If you crop the image and just look at the top 1/3 I bet more people would say it is white/gold. If you crop it so that you only see the bottom 1/3 I bet more people would say blue/black.

Can you solve the mystery of the Gold/Blue Dress?

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