What colors are this dress to you?

[ebia]

It's an optical illusion. Those have happened since the first man looked at the world. Our brains are wired to perceive things a specific way and it's not that hard to trick the brain into interpreting the information in an incorrect way.

Well, sort of. It's white-balance. The concept of which is well known to any photographer, but rarely does anyone stop and think that the human eye (or rather the bits of brain processing raw data from the eyes) has to do the same thing that a camera in auto-White balance mode does, and likewise it won't always get it right, especially when the available information is limited, extreme and distorted as it is in this photo.

 

[Starlightsobright]

Its clearly gold and white!!!! I have spoken...

I agree as does Mr Starlight

 

[billvelek]

It's an optical illusion. Those have happened since the first man looked at the world. Our brains are wired to perceive things a specific way and it's not that hard to trick the brain into interpreting the information in an incorrect way.

I know what optical illusions are, but my point was this: why is this ... (at least seemingly, as far as I know) ... the first and only instance where two people can look at a photograph at the same time and disagree on the colors? If there had ever been such a similar occurrence during the like of the social internet, it surely would have also caused a similar storm of interest ... yet I have never heard of anything like it.

Weird!

Your brother in Christ,

Bill Velek

 

[LoAmmi]

I know what optical illusions are, but my point was this: why is this ... (at least seemingly, as far as I know) ... the first and only instance where two people can look at a photograph at the same time and disagree on the colors? If there had ever been such a similar occurrence during the like of the social internet, it surely would have also caused a similar storm of interest ... yet I have never heard of anything like it.

Weird!

Your brother in Christ,

Bill Velek

People disagree on color all the time though. The thing with this is that it depends on how your brain is interpreting the light as opposed to the color. If I take a garment and hold it in direct sunlight and then hold it under a red light, the color will be different because of what's going on. However, we are able to interpret these things because we know the light source. In this case, the light source is unknown and different people are interpreting the light as different which makes their brain interpret the color differently.

 

[LoAmmi]

Well, sort of. It's white-balance. The concept of which is well known to any photographer, but rarely does anyone stop and think that the human eye (or rather the bits of brain processing raw data from the eyes) has to do the same thing that a camera in auto-White balance mode does, and likewise it won't always get it right, especially when the available information is limited, extreme and distorted as it is in this photo.

I was kind of using optical illusion as an informal stand-in since it takes longer to explain