An optical illusion with a dress has taken the world by storm. Chameleon dress - an optical illusion or an incorrectly calibrated screen? Dress color white gold or blue black

A photo of a strange dress (in the middle of the picture), posted the day before by the BuzzFeed portal, literally blew up the Internet. “Guys, help me, is this dress white and gold or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we’re going crazy,” one girl wrote, after which millions of users around the world went crazy.

Few could imagine that a simple picture could divide Internet users into two irreconcilable camps. Some vehemently claim that they clearly see a dark blue dress with black lace stripes, others - white dress with gold lace.

Celebrities' opinions were also divided. , they see the dress as white and gold, and , Kanye West – as black and blue. In reality, this dispute is not social, but biological. The difference in perception is explained by the way the human eye and brain have evolved to perceive the world illuminated by light. Light entering the human eye hits the retina, which consists of two types of photoreceptors - cones and rods, which are taught about in school. Rods are more sensitive to light and are more responsible for perceiving the shape rather than the color of objects. Cones, on the contrary, are more responsible for perceiving color rather than the degree of illumination of an object. In other words, at dusk we perceive the world through rods rather than cones.

What color scheme how different objects are perceived depends on whether there are more rods or cones in the retina of a particular person, and on the type of light that illuminates the object.

The rods perceive light intensity thanks to the visual pigment rhodopsin, which is very sensitive to low-intensity light and is destroyed when exposed to bright light. At the same time, it takes about 45 minutes to restore it - that’s why a person needs time to get used to twilight lighting normally.

For the same reason, if a person looks at a dress in bright light, then goes into a dark room for half an hour and returns, then most likely the color of the dress will change for him.

“Our visual system is accustomed to discarding information about the light source and drawing information from the actual reflected light. I'm studying individual characteristics I've been doing color vision for 30 years and this is the biggest difference I've ever seen in individual perceptions,” says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.

Moreover, color perception is influenced by how our brain tries to adjust colors and lighting to figure out what color an object actually has. Just as modern cameras adjust the light balance, the human brain does this automatically.

But at the same time, different people either ignore the blue shades, perceiving the image as white and gold, or ignore the yellow shades, seeing a blue and black dress.

Many other optical illusions have a similar nature, including the famous example with black and white squares on a chessboard.

A few days ago, the Internet was blown up by a photo of a dress. This story had already passed me by, but today at work they still showed me a picture:

I still don’t understand how you can see anything here other than a blue-black dress? 😃

Roman Women's Lace Detail Bodycon Dress Royal Blue

When I returned home, I showed the photo to my five-year-old daughter, then to my wife. They independently named the dress white and gold. Moreover, the Photoshop check did not convince them to look at the dress in a new way. Which led to this thorough investigation.

What Science Says

Objects in life shimmer in different shades depending on their surface (glossy, matte) and lighting. For example, snow is usually not white, but with a blue tint. Believing that the object in the photo is not illuminated by pure white light (for example, orange light from a fire), the brain tries to ignore this color shift. The brain doesn’t want to leave its comfort zone and assume that there might be snow. different colors. It is much more common to “see” snow as white. Each person's color correction process is unique, hence the controversy over the color of the dress.

Illusions of color perception

To understand that color perception is not so simple, here's a trick: look closely at the center of the first picture, then click on it, and the second picture will momentarily appear in color.

The first picture is a negative (a picture with reverse colors). When the images suddenly switch, compensation continues in the brain, and shades of gray are colored in required colors. What exactly is going on in your head? Perhaps this is akin to addiction, and it is not only visual perception. For example, the second candy no longer seems as sweet as the first.

What's with the dress?

So, the brain comes up with colors based on its own experience and the environment. To figure out the conditions for photographing a dress, the brain needs to cling to something familiar and understandable.

It's like a photographer looking for areas in a photo that should be pure gray in order to compensate for the shooting conditions and bring the colors closer to the real ones ("white balance").

There are several characteristic areas in our photo that indicate bright yellow lighting (or an incorrect shooting mode, which is identical to bright yellow lighting).

In addition, the main color of the dress is similar to blue, passed through a warm (that is, yellow) filter. Of course, to see this for sure, you need experience. Let's check this version: take a photo of a really blue-black dress from Google, put a beige filter on top of it. And finally, we put the same dress (cut out along the contour) over the photo. The blue and black colors, both in light and dark areas, matched down to the millimeter. Let me emphasize what exactly same conversion turned blue and black into what we need:

Here's another photo to check that I didn't change anything:

I hope that after this picture your doubts about the real color of the dress have disappeared, and what remains is knowledge about the nuances of color perception. By the way, the saturation of blue on that same dress is 20-30%. For comparison, on a snow-white, non-glossy dress in daylight, the blue saturation is within 5%, unless you are next to a large blue building. 20% is “confident” blue, this is the color used in the site header in this post.

Checking the reverse version

In the soft evening light, the bride’s snow-white dress may turn blue, but:
1) together with white, all colors will fade into blue, including red, yellow, and “gold”, but this did not happen in the original photo (all these colors are present in the photo in an undistorted form);
2) the original photo was clearly taken not in the evening, but in the light of the sun (or indoors under identical conditions); the light falls from above, this is evidenced by the clear shadows from the cape and from the relief stripes of the dress.

To be fair, let's check this version in Photoshop: Google a white dress and apply a cool blue filter. Let's imagine that the dress was photographed on the beach, late in the evening, when the sun had already set. Although this contradicts the original photo with very bright light yellow highlights. So the "white" color does match, but let's take a closer look at what's going on with the other colors:

Evening lighting from the sky is uniform, the shadows from such lighting are blurry and barely visible, and the photograph is dark over the entire surface. These properties are clearly not inherent in the original photo.

Gold color

Gold shimmers from light yellow to dark brown. The stripes on the dress (out of context) may be golden, but they lack the characteristic shine:

The fabric has smoother tints and noticeable roughness. This is what we see in the original photograph upon closer examination. On the left is a black leather bag and a black blanket, on the right is a dress.

A serious controversy broke out on social networks over a photo of a dress posted on Tumblr. Meanwhile, scientists tried to explain why for some the dress is blue-black, and for others it is white and gold.

What color is the dress: blue or white?

A dispute has flared up on the Internet about the color of the dress, a photograph of which appeared on the blog of Scottish resident Caitlin McNeil, writes MK. The problem is that three quarters of voters think that the dress is white and gold, the rest - that the dress is blue or even changes its color.

So, on February 25, a girl under the nickname Swiked published a photo of a dress on Tumblr and asked her friends a question about what color it was.

"Guys, help me, this is intkbbee Is the dress white and gold or blue and black? Me and my friends can't agree and we're going crazy."

After a couple of hours, millions of people were divided into two camps: some claimed that the outfit was blue and black, while others said it was white and gold. But even after the girl confirmed that it was indeed blue with black stripes, the online debate did not calm down...

A photograph of a strange dress, posted the day before by the BuzzFeed portal, literally blew up the Internet, turning the topic into a media virus.

In the photo: is the dress blue or white with gold?

Scientists are interested in a dress that changes color

Meanwhile, neuroscientist from Washington State University (USA) Jane Neitz tried to explain why for some people the dress is blue-black, and for others it is white and gold.

The expert claims that the whole point is in the work of the brain, which figures out what color light is reflected from an object and separates this color from the one it considers “real”.

"Our visual system is supposed to throw out information about lighting and extract information about the color that is actually reflected," Neitz said.

It is noted that the specialist has studied color perception for 30 years. She noted that differences in the perception of dress color are the most significant in her practice.

Different people either ignore the blue hues, seeing the image as white and gold, or ignore the yellow hues, seeing the blue and black dress.

There is also an opinion. So, in what color range various objects are perceived depends on what is more in the retina of a particular person - rods or cones, and on the kind of light that illuminates the object.

Meanwhile, Randolph-Macon College psychology professor Cedar Riener explained that people make judgments based on different perceptions of the light in a photo: “Some people decide that the photo shows a blue-black dress that is well-lit (or less reflective). Others think it's a less lit white and gold outfit (it's in the shadows but more reflective)."

John Borghi, who studies cognitive neurobiology at Rockefeller University, spoke about the dependence of what a person sees in the picture on the set of his impressions and expectations, as well as on the level of attention and even eye movements, reports TSN. For example, the idea of ​​the color of a dress can be influenced by what a person looked at before.

In the photo: the real color of the much-discussed dress is blue and black

What color do celebrities think they wear?

Celebrities' opinions were also divided, reports Super.Ru. Armenian Kim Kardashian sees the dress as white and gold, and Kanye West as black and blue. Dima Bilan - white with a slight cornflower blue tint and mustard. Yana Rudkovskaya - black with lavender color. Alena Vodonaeva - lilac with mustard color. Vyacheslav Manucharov - blue and gold. Alesya Kafelnikova - white and gold. Andrey Malakhov - white and gold. Evgeni Plushenko - black and blue. Irina Dubtsova - white and gold. Alena Doletskaya - amethyst blue and chocolate. Nikolay Baskov - white and gold. Julianne Moore - white and gold. Taylor Swift - black and blue. Ksenia Borodina - white with mustard color. Lolita - black with turquoise color. Joseph Prigogine - gold and silver. Valeria - gold and silver.

Internet users' opinions about the dress were divided: the dress got its own hashtag #TheDress. However, the author of the photo had to admit that the dress was actually blue and black. That is, the published image was processed.

But while non-trivial disputes continue online about what color the dress is, the TSN.ua editors have collected the funniest comments from Internet users on social networks.

website- At the end of last week, a photo appeared on the Internet that divided the world into two camps. As you may have guessed, we are talking about a magic dress. In the eyes of some people it is black and blue, in others it is white and golden... The editors have collected the facts that scientists told about.

On February 25, a girl under the nickname Swiked posted a photo of the dress on Tumblr and asked her friends a simple question about what color it was. Within a matter of hours, millions of people were divided into two camps: some claimed that the outfit was blue and black, while others said it was white and gold. But even after the author of the photo confirmed that it was indeed blue with black stripes, the debate online did not stop and continues to this day. Even scientists entered into the debate. They decided to finally explain what color the dress actually was. Washington State University neuroscientist Jane Neitz says human eyes and brains have evolved to discern color in a sunlit world. Light enters the eye through the lens - waves different lengths report different colors. Light hits the retina at the back of the eye, where pigments activate neural connections in the visual cortex, the part of the brain that translates signals into images. This theory is put forward by a popular American website.

“The brain figures out what color of light is reflected from the object that the eyes see, and separates that color from the color it considers “real.” "So people don't take into account blue, and then they see white and gold,” added Bevil Conway, another neuroscientist from Wellesley College.
For example, even what a person looked at before looking at a dress can have a direct impact on what colors they see. The level of lighting in the room in which the person is located also matters.

Lighting is very important for color recognition, which is a combination of how much light falls on an object and how much light is reflected from it. In the case of the dress, some people perceive the image as blue-black because it seems to their eye that the lighting is strong enough and there is little reflected light, others perceive more reflected color, so they see the dress as white and gold.
After this topic became so popular on the Internet, Caitlin McNeil, who published the photo, said that in fact the dress is blue and black.

“In addition to the poor quality of the image, the dispute is also explained by the way we perceive light. Our brain processes light waves of different lengths, each corresponding to a different color. As Bevil Conway, a scientist who studies color and vision, explained to Wired, daylight influences and changes the way we perceive the colors of objects. Therefore, when looking at a dress, our brain makes allowances for daylight and “cuts off” one of the undertones - bluish or yellowish. Due to the individuality of perception, it seems to some that the dress is white and gold, and to others that it is blue and black. In addition, this effect can also be explained by an optical illusion: the way we perceive the color of an object is influenced by the background on which it is located and the lighting. The photo may have been taken in bluish light, which may appear white to many."

The most detailed answer was given by Washington professor Jay Nates: “The dress is visible blue-black or white-gold depending on whether your eye has more rods or cones and the lighting conditions in the room. (This is made possible by the different colors that mix around you.) Different people have different rod and cone remnants—those with color blindness are particularly affected.
But the "rods" are also very sensitive to light. Rods detect color using a pigment called rhodopsin, which is very sensitive to low light, but flashes and is destroyed in higher light. high levels illumination And it should take about 45 minutes to adjust (well, just like your eyes will need time to adapt to the night, in other words). Basically, if you look at a dress in bright light and see one color, then if you go into a dark room for half an hour and come back, the dress will quite possibly change color.
Also the color of the dress is different different people associated with individual differences in color perception. If you've ever tried to work with photography, you've probably encountered white balance - the camera tries to balance it in inappropriate lighting conditions. Your brain does its own white balance, which automatically means that you either ignore the blue tint and see a white-gold image, or ignore the yellow tint and see a blue-black photo.

Ophthalmologists say that different perceptions of the color of a dress do not mean that you have problems with your eyes or mental health. Each person has individual vision characteristics. The brain processes light waves that hit the retina in a unique way, so some people see some colors and others see different colors.
There is a scientific explanation for why people see different colors in the same picture. This optical illusion. Objects reflect light at different wavelengths or colors, and the human brain determines color from the reflected light. Objects around you can also reflect color and influence your perception. In this photo there are many other colors around and they are mixed, and the brain cannot immediately determine the color of the dress. So, people who see the ambient light as dark see white instead of blue. It depends on the brain's perception process. Washington University professor Jay Neitz says he's been studying color differences for 30 years, and this case is one of the clearest differences he's ever seen. By the way, the dress seemed white to him.