Joined: 02 May 2005 Posts: 90299 Location: Formerly Known As 24
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 3:13 pm Post subject:
the association wrote:
24 wrote:
It is blue and black, but is somewhat of an optical illusion depending upon your rods and cones. People with great cones see (which detect color) the color first and compensate for the washed out shade, while those with less acute cones default to their rods (which see shade), and compensate in color in a spectrum that makes it seem white and gold.
Is this a definitive statement, or is it merely your opinion? I feel like I won't trust my eyes any longer if this (the dress is blue/black) is fact; if it's simply your opinion, I'll think about giving 'em another 10-day contract.
The dress is definitevely blue and black. It is a matter of the exposure and how your brain processes, either subtracting the light and getting to blue and black, or trying to add in color, which makes it gold and white. _________________ “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ― Elie Wiesel
This is pretty amazing – almost as much for how quickly this has gone viral as for the effect itself. There is now an intense debate going on in the intertubes over whether this dress is black and blue or white and gold. Take a look and decide for yourself. Buzzfeed has a poll which currently puts it at 72% white and gold, and 28% black and blue. Right now there are about 2 million votes, so that is probably statistically significant.
I see black and blue, no matter what screen or version of that picture I look at. It does not seem to be an issue with the monitor or viewing conditions.
The reason, in my opinion, this has gone so viral so quickly is that people are legitimately freaked out by the realization that how they see the world is ultimately a subjective construction of our brains. Taylor Swift tweeted about the debate:
“I don’t understand this odd dress debate and feel like it’s a trick somehow. I’m confused and scared. PS It’s OBVIOUSLY BLUE AND BLACK.”
That about sums it up. She thinks it must be a trick (it is – a trick of the brain), and is scared and confused. At the same time she is caps-lock-certain that her perception of the dress’s color is the objective truth.
This is clearly an optical illusion. The type of illusion is called color constancy. Our brains evolved to favor consistency over accuracy, in both memory and perception. If we see a tiger running through a sun-dappled forest, it’s important that we perceive a constant entity, not a morphing and changing image.
The actual color that falls upon our retina will change dramatically in different lighting conditions. This might trick a perceptive system into thinking that one item is actual multiple items, divided along lines of shade and light. In order to perceive the item as the single continuous thing that it is, our brains evolved color and shading correction algorithms White, for example, will appear blue in dark light, but our brains still see white – it corrects the blue perception into white.
Here is a black and white version of this illusion – the checkerboard illusion. The shade of squares A and B are identical, but our brains see them as light and dark. It makes assumptions about shading, and then corrects for the shadow effect, so that we correctly perceive the light squares as light, even when they are in shadow.
Below is a really intense color illusion. The blue and green stripes are actually the exact same color. Our brains perceive them differently because of the surrounding colors, which force our brains to make different assumptions about shading, and therefore they correct the color in opposite directions.
The dress is a similar color constancy illusion, but is also an ambiguous stimuli illusion. Ambiguous optical illusions are ones in which our brains are given conflicting information, or there are different ways to resolve the image that are equally valid. Remember the spinning girl illusion? This remains one of my most popular posts, for the same reason this dress controversy has gone viral. Our brains can make different assumptions to “see” the girl spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. There are lots of this type of illusion – is it a young girl or old woman, which way are the cubes facing, do you see a wine glass or two faces, etc.
The photo of the dress just happens to hit the sweet spot of ambiguity in terms of lighting and shading. Different people’s brains will therefore make different assumptions and correct for either apparent overexposure or underexposure. Do you have to correct for the glare of bright lights, or the dulling of colors because of shade? Remember, white appear blue when it is shadowed, and our brains correct the blue to white. Our brains can correct the reflective part of the dress darker to be black, or the dark parts of the dress lighter to appear gold.
Conclusion
This is a fun viral phenomenon, and one that is a useful teaching moment. The dress color debate is the result of an optical illusion. Don’t be “scared and confused,” this is just how our brains work.
I want to emphasize that this is not just a isolated weird case. This is how our brains work all the time. What we perceive is a constructed illusion, based upon algorithms that make reasonable assumptions about distance, shading, size, movement, and color – but they are assumptions, none-the-less, and sometimes they can be wrong or misleading.
By the way, it appears that the dress is objectively black and blue (see the photos here), which means that 72% of people are correcting in the wrong direction.
This sounds like the color theory lesson from an art class I took a long time ago. The lighting and exposure makes it hard to determine what color it's supposed to be in real life. Take a photo of, say, a blue bucket in a cool- or dimly-lit setting, color pick the bucket in Photoshop or MS Paint, and some or most of the object might be green, brown or gray.
If you color-pick the photo, the dress is "brown" and "pale blue." The rod/cone stuff sounds like nonsense "Facebook science" to me. When your brain processes the information your rods and cones picked up, your experience says that the pale blue and brown could mean a white and gold dress on an overcast day, or blue and black on a bright, sunny day.
I was teaching color theory and freaking students out with color tricks like this.
thanks Larry... i can't for the life of me see anything other than blue & black (or dk brn, etc.)... when some said they see white/gold i hit the pause button to ponder if they were fooling with me, color blind, or worse yet my eyes being messed up.
Joined: 21 May 2001 Posts: 11831 Location: West LA
Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 5:28 pm Post subject:
Alpha wrote:
thanks Larry... i can't for the life of me see anything other than blue & black (or dk brn, etc.)... when some said they see white/gold i hit the pause button to ponder if they were fooling with me, color blind, or worse yet my eyes being messed up.
Alpha...right there with you. One of my co-workers stopped me, before getting into the grind of work emails, and asked me to look at the pic. When she told me to pull up the pic, I looked at it and wondered what I'm supposed to be looking for. She asked me what color the dress is and I thought it was a joke.
Apparently, in the office, it was 50/50 between people that actually saw the white/gold combo vs. blue/black. _________________ Just chill and watch the new Dynasty evolve...
Time for the Lakers to create a whole new legacy! We want 10 more trophies boys!
I think this whole thing is a conspiracy. Wherever the picture is posted, the dress automatically changes from gold/white to black/blue at random times, cuz that (bleep) was gold/white yesterday, then black/blue last night, and now is gold/white again today! W.T.F.
I always saw blue and black. _________________
"Through the legs to the left, through the legs to the right, we don't run them Laker plays, we just Kobe fadeaway..."
Joined: 10 Dec 2006 Posts: 52624 Location: Making a safety stop at 15 feet.
Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:34 pm Post subject:
Reflexx wrote:
PrairieAve wrote:
This sounds like the color theory lesson from an art class I took a long time ago. The lighting and exposure makes it hard to determine what color it's supposed to be in real life. Take a photo of, say, a blue bucket in a cool- or dimly-lit setting, color pick the bucket in Photoshop or MS Paint, and some or most of the object might be green, brown or gray.
If you color-pick the photo, the dress is "brown" and "pale blue." The rod/cone stuff sounds like nonsense "Facebook science" to me. When your brain processes the information your rods and cones picked up, your experience says that the pale blue and brown could mean a white and gold dress on an overcast day, or blue and black on a bright, sunny day.
I was teaching color theory and freaking students out with color tricks like this.
This is less an issue of color theory and more an issue of light. Color theory is based on how colors relate to each other - Primary Colors, Secondary Colors and Tertiary Colors all react differently when combined together. They can enhance each other when placed side by side, but as they are mixed together they increasingly grow darker and less colorful.
Then there is the added element of Additive Color versus Subtractive Color. The print worlds is about mixing inks/pigments etc. subtractively. When creating an image on a canvas, you typically work from light to dark. You can easily make your image get darker, but building light out of the darkness that has already been laid down is increasingly difficult as the process goes on. The print world has a subtractive process. The more color you add, the darker and muddier things get. Whether it is painting and combining pigments or the print world where everything is based on a CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), combining things means darker and less definitive color.
Additive color results from the combination of light. In that world colors are created by adding brightness to colors in the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) spectrum. Color starts at black because no color of light has been added. As you add color from the three spectrums, you build color.
This particular illusion is not about color theory. It's about perception of light. Everyone who has seen this debate has done so from a computer, which by definition is an addictive color world. It's also an artificial world in that is is dictated by the light source it emanates from and the fact that humans are adapting to this world where Additive Light is a factor thanks to artificial light sources.
Our collective brains are still trying to adapt to seeing color and light portrayed in ways that were't possible a century ago.
The bottom line is that if we all saw the dress in our natural world, outside of those with color blindness, we would all see it the same.
In this picture you posted it is clearly white and gold and very ugly. But not so bad looking in blue and black, but it is clearly not blue or black in any way shape or form.
Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 35750 Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Hell) ->>>>>Ithaca, NY -≥≥≥≥≥Berkeley, CA
Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 6:24 pm Post subject:
GoldenChild wrote:
In this picture you posted it is clearly white and gold and very ugly. But not so bad looking in blue and black, but it is clearly not blue or black in any way shape or form.
Except it's actually blue and black. _________________ Damian Lillard shatters Dwight Coward's championship dreams:
In this picture you posted it is clearly white and gold and very ugly. But not so bad looking in blue and black, but it is clearly not blue or black in any way shape or form.
Except it's actually blue and black.
Technically yes, but in that specific picture it's been so contrasted and brightened where the color is white and gold. The background is extremely bright so the contrast, saturation and brightness has been altered.
Technically yes, but in that specific picture it's been so contrasted and brightened where the color is white and gold. The background is extremely bright so the contrast, saturation and brightness has been altered.
Re-read my post. Others will look at the same picture (not a different picture of the same dress, but the same picture) and see blue & black. This is what our brains do; your brain puts together an interpretation of the input that's coming in. Some brains will interpret it one way; other brains the other way. Most of the time, there's no ambiguity in the image so most/all of us end up interpreting it the same way. But this one is right on that ambiguous border.
Joined: 21 Feb 2008 Posts: 28422 Location: LA --> Bay Area
Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 10:03 pm Post subject:
LarryCoon wrote:
GoldenChild wrote:
Technically yes, but in that specific picture it's been so contrasted and brightened where the color is white and gold. The background is extremely bright so the contrast, saturation and brightness has been altered.
Re-read my post. Others will look at the same picture (not a different picture of the same dress, but the same picture) and see blue & black. This is what our brains do; your brain puts together an interpretation of the input that's coming in. Some brains will interpret it one way; other brains the other way. Most of the time, there's no ambiguity in the image so most/all of us end up interpreting it the same way. But this one is right on that ambiguous border.
Basically, it's the visual version of a persuasive essay.
Joined: 05 Feb 2008 Posts: 3242 Location: Mid-Wilshire: just beyond "The Puff Puff Pass"
Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 3:35 am Post subject:
For three days I only saw white and gold...it wasn't until I saw a news report that went to the place that is selling the dress and a model came out wearing it and it was black and blue
But more important, what is the color, when black is burned? What is the color?
"And he said: "Colour isn't something that exists in the world. Different wavelengths of light exist and can be observed but colour is something we make up inside our heads."
True, to a certain extent. Still I don't think that fully explains things on this subject. Having lived with a pretty severe case of red-green color deficiency, I know that I have recognized some of this. But it still doesn't, IMO, explain, the clear pattern of deficiency in recognizing subtle and sometimes even not so subtle differences in color vision.
We all may make up vision in our heads, but when 98% of the people see a red field with a small green dot on it, that dot jumps out at them. When I scan that field, I probably miss the dot completely unless it is pointed out to me. So, I don't think it's just a conditioned response to social convention or even expectation. I think 24's explanation has a lot to do with it as well.
Now when there is a blue field and a yellow dot, that jumps out at me. From all accounts, I experience that as the vast majority of humans do, but as stark as that difference is, I hear that there is a similar starkness of difference between red and green and that boggles my mind because I just can't see it.
It's like hearing recognizing a major second and then hearing one of the most used and famous ones E->F sharp. That interval has a sound like no other, but most couldn't recognize it even if it is played with other intervals or other major seconds. _________________ “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays
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