Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What Color is this Dress?

  • Black & Blue

    Votes: 12 50.0%
  • Gold & White

    Votes: 12 50.0%

  • Total voters
    24
Okay, I just did two things.

First I did the color test thing to make sure my eyeballs are working correctlys. Turns out I have perfect color vision.

Proof!

Then I saved the picture, and ran it through the Selective Color adjuster in Photoshop. The gold that's supposedly black? It's gold. It responds to changes made under red and yellow selections, not neutrals and blacks.

The white section does have a blue tinge, so it responds to changes made under blue. It's still mostly white, though.

So I'm calling BS for computer verified reasons.
The color of the dress has been verified as Blue and Black.
 
The color of the dress has been verified as Blue and Black.

Then why is Photoshop picking it up as shades of brown?.

I'll say one thing, it doesn't invert colors the way I thought it would. That said, I could maybe see it fooling the eye, but the eyedropper in PS is drawing the color info directly from the pixel.

edit: turns out I'm not the first person to have done this. Still, I see the colors as PS picks them up. A blue-white dress with yellow-brown trim. As mobilehaati shows on page 2, a lot of the ways we discern color is in contrast to other colors. That's basic color theory, and some people might see it as a black and blue dress when contrasted against the white background. Maybe because they're subconsciously focusing on it rather than the dress itself. Who knows.

But the actual color of the dress is that blue-white and dark yellow-brown. If you zoom the picture up to its individual pixels, they're still that same color to me. At that level of zoom, you're going to see only a field of individual colors, with nothing else to contrast against, which means that's its real color. If some people are still seeing black to others yellow-brown there, then that means there's a difference in the way their eyes perceive color from each other.
 
Last edited:
Isn't it fascinating how passionate people are over a silly optical illusion.

The dress itself is black and blue... period
The maker and seller say so
The model who wore it says so
And if you look at a decent pic of it, it is clearly black and blue

The question isn't 'what color is the dress', but 'what colors do you see in the picture', and the picture is just a really bad, overexposed pic of a dress that creates an optical illusion.

People see the picture of the dress differently based on the physiology of their eyes, the lighting, the calibration of their computer's monitor or their device and a number of other factors detailed here and here.

Running the pic through Photoshop does absolutely nothing to determine the color of the actual dress, but it can give some insight into the bad pic of the dress and why different colors are seen by different individuals.

There are numerous interesting optical illusions to be found on the internet that boggle the mind. Most of them are far more interesting than an ugly pic of a dress.
 
Isn't it fascinating how passionate people are over a silly optical illusion.

...and then some other stuff.

I don't think anyone's arguing over the color of the dress itself, but the picture. You gotta admit that it's strange that some people apparently see it as a black and blue, while others see it as gold and white, and others still see it as somewhere in between.
 
The dress has swapped between the two colors multiple times over the last few days for me. It's really weird. I'm not so interested in the dress, as I am in the optical illusion, one of the coolest I've ever seen.
 
I don't understand this whole controversy. I mean, was the girl sent three photos? As far as I understand it, the girl was sent a washed out photo, and the dress appeared to be a light/periwinkle blue, and as far as the trim, it was hard to say, but I saw it as perhaps the trim being gold or a washed out brownish color. It was a poor photograph. How the hell did people see white, or anything else? Was it because people's devices had the color calibrated differently? I almost call BS on this whole thing.
 
What Color is this Dress *Explanation*

I don't understand this whole controversy. I mean, was the girl sent three photos? As far as I understand it, the girl was sent a washed out photo, and the dress appeared to be a light/periwinkle blue, and as far as the trim, it was hard to say, but I saw it as perhaps the trim being gold or a washed out brownish color. It was a poor photograph. How the hell did people see white, or anything else? Was it because people's devices had the color calibrated differently? I almost call BS on this whole thing.


The Scottish girl (21 y/o) who took the picture posted it on tumblr or Facebook (I forget) and said "guys please help me - is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the **** out". Only one picture, not three.

You ask if it's because people's device's have the color calibrated differently? In my case, no. I've stated in one of my posts here, I've showed the picture of the dress to a couple of people using the same phone, some said they see white and gold, others blue and black. It mostly has to do with people's eyes and brains.

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1425192936.462822.jpg
 
The Scottish girl (21 y/o) who took the picture posted it on tumblr or Facebook (I forget) and said "guys please help me - is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the **** out". Only one picture, not three.

You ask if it's because people's device's have the color calibrated differently? In my case, no. I've stated in one of my posts here, I've showed the picture of the dress to a couple of people using the same phone, some said they see white and gold, others blue and black. It mostly has to do with people's eyes and brains.

View attachment 532258

So which of the three photos is the one she posted? The one in the first post is the one she posted on Tumblr?

If it was that one, I see neither white and gold or blue and black. I see light washed out blue and what appears to be gold or a washed out brown, as I said. I don't think anyone really sees that photo as white. It's a bad photo and they interpret it as white. But I don't think anyone actually sees white. Then I read the explnations and it says if you see white and gold you're left brained, and if you see blue and black you're right brained, and it goes on to say that left brain excels at languages, remembers the words but not the tune, and right brained is creative and remembers the tune but not the words. Hmm, well I speak three languages and easily excel at learning languages, and I always remember both the tune and the words of songs. I've also always been creative, but as a kid growing up I hated math. So....

ADDENDUM: In the attached photo in the post above, it's definitely white and gold on the left and because of the lighting, appears light/faded blue and dark gold/or maybe one would say washed out brown. Are people really seeing it differently than that?
 
Last edited:
What Color is this Dress *Explanation*

So which of the three photos is the one she posted? The one in the first post is the one she posted on Tumblr?

Yes.

If it was that one, I see neither white and gold or blue and black. I see light washed out blue and what appears to be gold or a washed out brown, as I said. I don't think anyone really sees that photo as white.


Okay. But some people do see it as white white (see pic posted in last post) :)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.