What color is this dress: white and gold or blue and black? The mystery of the blue and white dress. Optical illusions What color does the other person see me

The network again flared up disputes about the color of the clothing attribute. Now the sneaker has become the cause of controversy. Some consider the sneakers gray-blue, some white-pink. Which side are you on?

“In fact, the sneakers turned out to be pink,” says the Internet.

In general, scientists explained this phenomenon back in 2015, when a black-blue or golden-white dress walked around the Internet.

On Thursday, February 26, 2015, a Tumblr user posted a picture of a dress online. The girl asked her friends what colors they see in the photo - white and gold or blue and black. The question seems very simple, but it was this Internet post that divided all users of the World Wide Web into two camps. In fact, the dress in the photo is blue and black.

Some scientists explained the difference in opinions by the fact that everything depends on “day” or “night” perception. According to them, the color perception system developed in humans in the process of evolution.

“We have developed day vision, in which we distinguish all elements of the world around us, including color. Light enters the eye through the lens, hitting the retina at the back of the eye. Waves different lengths differently activate neural connections in the visual cortex, which translates signals into images. Night vision allows us to see the contours and movement of objects, but their colors are lost. However, even in daylight, color perception is not always unambiguous: under different lighting, the color gamut of an object is perceived differently, and the brain also takes this into account. The same color at dawn may appear pink-red to us, during the day - white-blue, and at sunset - red. The brain makes a decision about the “reality” of color, in each case making an adjustment for concomitant factors,” the researchers noted and explained that this explains the difference in the perception of the same image by different people.

Those who mistake the light in the background for the sun, decide that the dress is in the shade, so its light areas are obviously blue. Someone in the same bright light is more accustomed to seeing the whiteness of the dress. This is the most common version. However, the brain of about 30% of people does not take into account the light on the background at all - and in this case the dress seems blue to him, and the gold fragments then "become" black.

University of Washington neuroscientist Jay Nitz explained that light enters the eye through a lens - different wavelengths correspond to different colors. Light hits the retina at the back of the eye, where the pigments activate neural connections in the visual context, the part of the brain that processes those signals and turns them into an image. It is extremely important that the light that illuminates everything in this world and essentially has one wavelength is reflected from what you are looking at. The brain independently figures out what color the light reflected from the object you are staring at, and independently extracts the desired color from the “real” color of the object.

“Our visual system is able to discard information about the light source and extract information from a particular reflector,” says Jay Nitz. “But I have been studying individual differences in color vision for over 30 years, and this particular difference is one of the largest in my memory.”

Usually this system works great. But this image somehow touches the border of perception. Part of this may be due to the way people are set. Humans have evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes color. This chromatic axis ranges from a pinkish-red dawn, through a blue-white afternoon, and then back into a reddish dusk.

"In this case, your visual system is looking at this thing and you're trying to ignore the chromatic shift in the daylight axis," says Bevil Conway, a neurologist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College.

According to another version, the reason for the different perception of colors is a violation of color vision.

These violations can be established using Rabkin's tables. Color perception depends on the visual pigment, this indicator is most often congenital, but it can also be acquired - after an injury or neuritis.

Also, according to psychologists, the perception of color is influenced by living conditions, the state of the person at the moment, professional training and the general condition of the organs of vision.

Another interesting explanation:

optical illusions

Optical illusions often amaze the human imagination, but few of them are able to make people argue with each other so fiercely about what they see. For example, many people remember the gif-image of a girl rotating around its axis: someone sees that she is rotating clockwise, and someone sees that it is against. The authors of this trick report that right-handed people see the girl spin clockwise, while left-handed people see the opposite. So what determines the perception of the colors of a dress or sneaker?

To answer this question, scientists are asked to recall an optical illusion with a shadow on a chessboard: “white” and “black” cells actually turn out to be the same color, although our brain, familiar with the concepts of “shadow” and “chessboard”, is aware that the colors of the cells should be different. The fact is that we think that objects in the shadow are actually lighter than they seem, although in reality this may not be the case.

A similar situation occurs with two color images of the Rubik's Cube. Two identical figures are depicted next to each other, but one of them is viewed through a blue filter, and the other through a yellow one. Thus, a person sees one square on the top side of the cube as blue and the other as yellow, while both of them are, in fact, gray.

“All of this happens because our brains have unconsciously learned to take into account the importance of the influence of a light source,” explains Dr. Erin Goddard, a cognitive psychologist at Macquarie University in Australia.

Dr. Goddard invites the participants in the argument to imagine that they are holding a sheet of white paper from an office printer. On the street, in a dark bar, under artificial lighting at home, or even in a laboratory with cold light, a person understands that a sheet is white, no matter what color it may seem. So, we can say, a person “makes a discount” on the light source.

Exactly the same thing happens with optical illusions, scientists explain. Looking at a gray square in blue “lighting”, we think that it is yellow, and looking at the exact same gray square in a yellow filter, we guess that it must be blue.

The main thing to understand when considering a lace dress is that we are doing a “discount” on lighting. However, unlike the previous examples, this shot has its own characteristics that make different people see the dress in different colors. First of all, it should be understood that the color composition of a photograph is a very complex “cocktail”.

“If you look at the RGB values for the black and gold part of the dress, they are yellow ocher brown. The rest of the stripes of the dress in the same palette turn out to be light blue with purple hues, ”says Professor Bart Anderson of the University of Sydney, who researches the problems of visual perception in humans.

Another feature that scientists believe is the key to the problem is that it is impossible to determine from the picture under which light source the dress was photographed. As Dr. Goddard explains, the image does not show whether the dress is in the shade or in the light, indoors in artificial light, or outdoors in daylight and the corresponding shadows.

“In addition to the fact that shadows make things appear darker, they have another feature. Direct sunlight is a yellowish filter, which in turn makes us see things bluer - like in the Rubik's cube illusion. Artists are aware of this and add blue to the shadows to make them more convincing,” explains Dr. Goddard.

Thus, without a clue about the light source, people begin to speculate under what conditions the picture of the dress was taken. Those who subconsciously believe that the photo was taken in natural sunlight with its shadows see the dress as white and gold, and those who guess that the dress was photographed under artificial lighting in a windowless room are sure that the dress is blue- black.

One way or another, a randomly taken picture of a dress is an extremely interesting and even out of the ordinary example of an optical illusion. Dr. Jay Neitz of the University of Washington, who was one of the first to investigate the phenomenon, said that he had been studying individual differences in color perception for thirty years, but this was the first time he had encountered such a powerful example in his practice.

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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 magical dress. In the eyes of some people, it is black and blue, in others it is white and gold. The editors have collected facts about which scientists have told.

On February 25, a girl named Swiked posted a photo of the dress on Tumblr and asked her friends a simple question about what color it was. After a few hours, millions of people were divided into two camps: some claimed that the outfit was blue and black, while others claimed that it was white and gold. But even after the author of the photo confirmed that it was indeed blue with black stripes, the debate on the network did not stop and continues to this day. Even the scientists got into the fight. They finally decided to explain what color the dress really is. So University of Washington neuroscientist Jane Nitz says that human eyes and brains have evolved to distinguish colors in a world illuminated by the sun. Light enters the eye through the lens - different wavelengths 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 light is reflected from the object that the eyes see, and separates this color from the color that it considers “real”. "So people don't take blue into account, and then they see white and gold," added another Wellesley College neuroscientist, Bevil Conway.
For example, even what a person looks at before looking at a dress can have a direct impact on what colors they see. Also important is the level of lighting in the room in which the person is located.

Lighting is very important for color recognition, which is a combination of how much light hits an object and how much light is reflected off it. In the case of a 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-gold.
After this topic became so popular on the Internet, Caitlin McNeil, who posted a photo, said that in fact the dress is blue and black.

“In addition to the poor quality of the image, the dispute is also due to the way we perceive light. Our brain processes different wavelengths of light, each corresponding to a different color. As Bevil Conway, a color and vision scientist, explained to Wired, daylight affects and changes the way we perceive the colors of objects. Therefore, when looking at a dress, our brain corrects 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, a similar effect can also be explained by an optical illusion: how we perceive the color of an object is affected by the background on which it is located and the lighting. The picture may have been taken in bluish light, which may appear to many to be white."

The most detailed answer was given by Washington professor Jay Neitz: “The dress appears 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 the first to suffer.
But the "rods" are also very sensitive to light. The rods detect color using a pigment called rhodopsin, which is very sensitive to low light but flares out and is destroyed at higher light levels. And it should take about 45 minutes to readjust (how your eyes take time to adjust to the night, in other words). In principle, 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 return, the dress will quite possibly change color.
Also, the different color of the dress in different people is associated with individual differences in color perception. If you've ever tried photography, you've probably come across white balance - the camera trying to equalize it in inappropriate lighting conditions. Your brain does its own white balancing, which automatically means that you are either ignoring the blue tint and seeing a white/gold image, or ignoring the yellow tint, seeing a blue/black photo.

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

IN in social networks For more than a day they have been arguing about the color of the dress in the photo of the Tumblr user under the nickname Swiked: blue and black or white and gold. Jane Nitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, explained to The Wired why some people see different colors in the same image.
Human eyes and brains have evolved to distinguish colors in a world illuminated by the sun. Light enters the eye through the lens - different wavelengths 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.

The brain figures out what color light is reflected from the object that the eyes see, and separates this color from the color it considers "real". "Our visual system is supposed to throw out information about lighting and extract information about the color that is actually reflected," Naitz said. “But I have been studying individual differences in color perception for 30 years, and these differences in dress color perception are the most noticeable of those that I have ever seen,” the neuroscientist added.

Usually the color perception system does not fail. Humanity has evolved to see in daylight, however it changes colors. The color of the sun's light changes from pinkish-red at dawn and blue-white at noon to red at dusk. "Your visual system looks at these color changes and tries to ignore some of the day's color shifts," said Wellesley College neurologist Bevil Conway. "Thus, people either do not take into account the blue color, and then they see white and gold, or gold - and then looking at a blue and black dress," the scientist concluded (he sees blue and orange in the photo).

In other words, in the case of photography, people take the light in the background for sunlight and conclude that the dress is in the shade, which means that its light areas should become bluish. So, there is no pure white color, however, our brain thinks out for us the whiteness of the snow or the dress.

Others do not take into account the light in the background and see a blue dress. They call gold fragments black, because they remember that if you look at a black object in the bright sun, you can see gold. In addition, it is likely that some of the blue-seeing people knew in advance about the real color of the dress, and because of this, the brain gave the correct answer. If you take a sample of the colors from the dress in Photoshop, it turns out that the colors of the dress are bluish and greenish-brown, writes Snob.ru.

Swiked posted a photo of the dress on February 25, asking what color it was. According to her, she argued about it with friends. Internet users quickly began to argue about this topic, and the hashtag #thedress topped the top Twitter trends in the US. Kim Kardashian (white and gold), singer Kanye West (blue and black), singer Taylor Swift (blue and black) and David Duchovny (greenish blue) joined the discussion. The Sony Play Station account in Australia also managed to joke about this topic: "Introducing the new white and gold Dualshok 4 controller." The manufacturer of the dress has already stated that so far only the blue version is being sold, but soon white and gold will also be on sale.

They asked neurologists to explain the phenomenon of different perceptions of the color of a black and blue dress, which social media users have been discussing for the past 24 hours.

Recall that yesterday a Tumblr user under the nickname Swiked in his tumblog, a photo of a dress and asked for help determining its color. According to Swiked, she and her friends cannot agree on the same opinion: some see the dress as black and blue, others see it as white and gold. University of Washington neurologist Jay Neitz, who sees the dress in white and gold, says it's the biggest individual difference in color perception in his 35 years of practice.

The eye perceives color through reflected light waves, explains Wired. Light hits the retina of the eye, the pigments of which process the information and send it to the brain. Pigments perceive different colors depending on the wavelength of the light received. In this case, the first flash of light that hits the retina can have any wavelength (that is, a different color). After the retina receives the light reflected from the object, the brain tries to “subtract” the subsequent information from the data of the first flash.

Because people are active during the daytime, they most often perceive daylight. It can range from pinkish red to blue-white to reddish. "This will happen if the visual system sees an object and tries to ignore the chromatic shift of daylight," says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist at Wellesley College. “So people will either ignore bluish and see a white and gold dress, or yellowish and see a black and blue dress.” He probably means the current lighting around the person.

Knights edition of Vice has two theories. First, differences in perception may be related to age. According to him, over time, the human retina changes and begins to perceive less blue light. This may explain why Knights, 61, sees a white and gold dress while his student sees a black and blue one. However, this theory does not explain the differences in people of the same age.

The second assumption concerns color constancy. and colored lighting. Illumination constancy means that a person will see red in both bright and dim light. But with colored lighting, the brain makes a correction. “If I go into a room and turn on red lighting, then white objects will reflect red. And if I have some red thing with me, then it will also reflect red. By processing this information, the brain can decide that a red object is actually white, even if it saw it as red in normal light.

“I observed this with my red Volkswagen,” adds the scientist. - I got into the car when it was dark enough outside, and someone in front of me turned on the brake lights. Then my car was lit only by brake lights - and it looked white! Vice journalist tried to transfer this theory to a photo of a dress and decided that it was taken under bluish lighting. Therefore, the brain, perceiving colored lighting, thinks that the dress is actually white.

Wired asked for an in-house designer work with the photo and decompose individual sections in the RGB palette. The blue areas did turn out to be blue, but the designer attributed this to the larger area of blue in the photo. At the same time, some dark areas in the image had a palette (R 93, G 76, B 50) close to orange. The specialist attributed this to the fact that we see this place on a white background and perceive it as black. If you cut it out and look at it on a black background, then the area R 93, G 76, B 50 may seem almost orange.

The same is said by Knights, who saw the dress in white and gold: “I printed out the picture, then cut out a piece and looked at it out of context. The color turned out to be somewhere halfway between gold and blue, but not dark blue. It's just that my brain thinks that there is blue in the light source, and the brain of other people that there is blue in the dress. Conway adds, “Most people will see blue on a white background as blue. But some may see blue on black as white."

Jay Knights ended his conversation with Vice with a promise to dedicate the rest of his life to this phenomenon. “I thought I would treat blindness, but now I will do it,” he said.

Incredible Facts

What color is this dress? This question caused a fierce debate on the Internet, where users were divided into those who believe that this is a white and gold dress, and those who see a blue and black dress.

The photo of the dress was first posted on Tumblr by Scottish user Caitlin McNeill after she noticed that her friends were seeing different colors in the photo.

The picture quickly became an online sensation due to controversy surrounding the dress's true color. A label #TheDress (dress) began to quickly gain popularity around the world.

The girl herself said that she did not expect such a reaction to the dress that she wore to a friend's wedding.

Optical illusion

In fact, there is a scientific explanation for why some people see a blue-black dress, while others see a golden-white one.

The picture itself is optical illusion.

Objects reflect light at certain wavelengths or colors, and the human brain determines the color of the object by taking the reflected color. Such perception may be distorted by the colors of nearby objects.

This is similar to Adelson's shadow illusion. In the image, cell A is the same color as cell B, but due to the environment they look different.

In this photo, the surrounding colors are so chaotic that the brain cannot figure out what color the dress is.

Is the dress blue or white?

Digital analysis of the photo of the dress showed that one of the spots on the black lace is orange in the photo.

The original photo is in the middle. On the left, brightness and contrast have been adjusted so that the dress looks more white and gold. On the right, the brightness and contrast have been adjusted to make the dress appear blue-black.

Thus, people who perceive the surrounding area of the dress as dark will see blue as white and black as gold. It depends on how the brain perceives and processes colors.

In fact, this dress is blue with black lace.