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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the Do-mine-eyes-deceive-me? dept.

Color scientists already have a word for it: Dressgate. Now the Washington Post reports that a puzzling thing happened on Thursday night consuming millions — perhaps tens of millions — across the planet and trending on Twitter ahead of even Jihadi John’s identification. The problem was this: Roughly three-fourths of people swore that this dress was white and gold, according to BuzzFeed polling but everyone else said it's dress was blue. Others said the dress could actually change colors. So what's going on? According to the NYT our eyes are able to assign fixed colors to objects under widely different lighting conditions. This ability is called color constancy. But the photograph doesn’t give many clues about the ambient light in the room. Is the background bright and the dress in shadow? Or is the whole room bright and all the colors are washed out? If you think the dress is in shadow, your brain may remove the blue cast and perceive the dress as being white and gold. If you think the dress is being washed out by bright light, your brain may perceive the dress as a darker blue and black.

According to Beau Lotto, the brain is doing something remarkable and that's why people are so fascinated by this dress. “It’s entertaining two realities that are mutually exclusive. It’s seeing one reality, but knowing there’s another reality. So you’re becoming an observer of yourself. You’re having tremendous insight into what it is to be human. And that’s the basis of imagination.” As usual xkcd has the final word.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:57PM (#151178)

    It's a forced meme started by Buzzfeed.

    • (Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:23PM

      by pnkwarhall (4558) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:23PM (#151187)

      So the real question is "What's this distracting us from?"

      --
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      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:28PM (#151191)

        > So the real question is "What's this distracting us from?"

        The ads on the buzzfeed page for the meme.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by pnkwarhall on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:52PM

          by pnkwarhall (4558) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:52PM (#151203)

          That's likely. I don't know, or even heavily suspect that that's not the case. But I also know that people drastically underestimate the weapons of psychological influence wielded by the powers-that-be, and the Internet has only made it easier to manipulate the mass attention-span. This question should **always** be asked when the mass attention-span is pointed towards trivia [youtube.com].

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          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:12PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:12PM (#151214)

            The thing is that mass attention span is nearly always directed at trivia. The fact that much of it happens to occasionally coalesce on one specific item of trivia is not meaningful. Whether it is a thousand different cat pictures, or just one cat picture doesn't just change the fact that it is all going to cat pictures. That reasoning might have a wag-the-dog logic back when there were only 3 television networks and a handful of national newspapers. But not any more.

            • (Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:28AM

              by pnkwarhall (4558) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:28AM (#151374)

              I mod'd your response up, but I can't leave it at that, as to me it was much more insightful than my own post. The Internet is the greatest distraction mechanism that's been invented/re-purposed yet--definitely more than tv, and maybe even more so than drugs. it doesn't matter what we're distracted with, as long as we're too distracted to think and act **together** on non-trivial matters.

              Soma...

              --
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by FlatPepsi on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:07PM

    by FlatPepsi (3546) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:07PM (#151181)

    This is a very bad photo - the white balance is off, the exposure is badly overexposed, the focus is off, it's frames poorly, and is taking in portrait orientation to top it off. You can't tell much from the photo other than the photographer doesn't know what he/she is doing.

    You can have 1,000 people argue and analyze this crappy photo for years, but it all means nothing. That's the only thing that "news" stations are doing. Asking "what do you see?" is not news. Having PhotoShop "experts" pick single pixels is just hand-waving to try and make corrupt data make sense.

    The way to settle the issue is to find the original dress and have a photographer who knows what they're doing take a new photo. That's how you settle it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:25PM (#151189)

      This is a very bad photo - the white balance is off, the exposure is badly overexposed, the focus is off, it's frames poorly, and is taking in portrait orientation to top it off.

      Don't get hung up on semantics. All that is implicitly part of the question. It is the visual context in which the optical illusion lies. Stating it more explicitly: "Is the dress, as presented in this specific photo, white and gold or blue and black?"

      For the literalists among us, the actual dress, in a standard photo, can be seen here on amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/really-loud-fartknockers/dp/B00SJEUCWU [amazon.co.uk]

      • (Score: 2, Troll) by Grishnakh on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:57PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:57PM (#151265)

        For all of LaminatorX's talk about how crappy the photography is in the debated photo, the dress in the Amazon photo (obviously a professional photo, and also obviously the same dress as seen in the details) looks exactly like the one in the crappy photo to me. Are people really this fucking blind? The original photo is crappy, yes, but it's not so crappy that I can't see the dress, see that it's the same as the Amazon dress, and it even looks like the exact same colors!!! (The colors are slightly off in the crappy photo, granted, but not remotely to the point where they look white and gold.)

        This whole thing is just making me wonder how horrible some peoples' perception of reality is. No wonder so many people claim to see ghosts or whatever, if they can't even see that a stupid dress is blue and black in a crappy cellphone photo.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:28PM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:28PM (#151277) Journal

          talk about how crappy the photography is in the debated photo, the dress in the Amazon photo (obviously a professional photo, and also obviously the same dress as seen in the details) looks exactly like the one in the crappy photo to me. Are people really this fucking blind? The original photo is crappy, yes, but it's not so crappy that I can't see the dress, see that it's the same as the Amazon dress, and it even looks like the exact same colors!!!

          I'm sure you must be running a modern browser.
          So open two browser windows, one on Amazon, one on the dress in question.
          Adjust your browser windows so that they are side by side.

          If you STILL think the dresses are the same color,

          1) surf the web till you find some color blindness test pages and take all of those tests.
          2) Visit your eye doctor.

          Why: Because the two dresses, the Original [washingtonpost.com]and the Amazon One [images-amazon.com] are NOT the same color.

          So unless you are trolling for fun and arguments, don't be badmouthing other people's observational abilities, untill you download both photos show them side by side, and ask 10 people if they are the same. According to the story 3/4 will disagree with you.

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          • (Score: 1, Troll) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:44AM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:44AM (#151352)

            I've looked at them both side-by-side. You're color-blind. The crappy photo is obviously washed-out, but the colors are still obviously blue and black.

            • (Score: 2, Informative) by frojack on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:56AM

              by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:56AM (#151358) Journal

              You don't get to say what thy might have been before they were washed out.

              All you get to say is that the photos viewed side by side look the same to you.
              That is the claim YOU MADE.

              Now you tell me the the photo is washed out. Yet they look the same to you (or so you say).
              If that were the case, you would not be able to say one was washed out. So clearly the DON'T
              look the same to you, which means you've been lying all along.

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              • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:25AM

                by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:25AM (#151371)

                I think you have psychological problems and should see a counselor.

                I never said they look exactly the same, just that they look the same: they're the same dress and the same color. One photo is merely overexposed.

                • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:40AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:40AM (#151381)

                  He has psychological problems? Who are you to make that judgment? Aren't you the one who I've seen supporting systemd around here and at Slashdot?

                • (Score: 4, Touché) by frojack on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:51AM

                  by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:51AM (#151386) Journal

                  Here's the post where you said they were the exact same color:
                  https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6328&cid=151265 [soylentnews.org]

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                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:08PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:08PM (#151853)

                  Fading would not turn blue and black into gold and white. Only inverting would. Not only do you seem to be colour blind. You are also ignorant of basic color theory.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:06PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:06PM (#151851)

              Erm... have you tried picking the colors with a color picker? Even completely out of context, they are clearly gold and white. You sir are either brainwashed or you are being paid to say what you are saying.

          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:50AM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:50AM (#151357)

            According to the story 3/4 will disagree with you.

            Lots of people also claim to see ghosts and Bigfoot. Do you?

            Maybe this photo can be used as a test to tell if someone is prone to "seeing things". If we polled 1000 people on this picture, and also on whether they've observed supernatural phenomena, I wonder if we'd see a correlation.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:11PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:11PM (#151854)

              If that is what this test is devised to detect, then you have just failed it. Maybe the absence of "ghosts" and many other things, which many others see, is the actual hallucination. Maybe if you stopped taking your meds it would be a gold and white dress like my color spectrometer tells me it is. There really is no need to be subjective about this.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:43PM (#151282)

          > This whole thing is just making me wonder how horrible some peoples' perception of reality is.

          Don't let that superiority complex go to your head.
          Your ability to see it a certain way is nothing more than physiological luck.
          Here are 12 other illusions, I'm sure you are susceptible to most, if not all, of them.

          http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/27/12-fascinating-optical-illusions-show-how-color-can-trick-the-eye/ [washingtonpost.com]

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:45PM

          by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:45PM (#151285) Journal

          Here you go Grish....

          http://s22.postimg.org/w621krqdd/You_are_blind.png [postimg.org]

          Go ahead, tell me they are the same image.

          --
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          • (Score: 1, Troll) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:07AM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:07AM (#151362)

            They're not "the same image", they're obviously two different images of the same exact dress. The one on the right is washed out because of overexposure. It's also obviously (washed-out) blue and (washed-out) black.

            Tell me, have you ever seen supernatural phenomena?

            • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:48AM

              by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:48AM (#151385) Journal

              No, its not obviously washed out blue. Its Gold. And White.
              Your monitor is defective.

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        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Sunday March 01 2015, @10:51AM

          by K_benzoate (5036) on Sunday March 01 2015, @10:51AM (#151483)

          The disputed photo appears to me white and gold, the Amazon photo of the real dress is blue and black. I have perfect colour vision (and perfect vision as measured by my doctor this year) and a professionally calibrated monitor. If you see blue/black in the original image, your brain is doing a lot of additional post-processing which most humans are not experiencing. You're in a roughly 25% minority.

          This whole event proves that most vision is in the brain, and is subjective.

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        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by vux984 on Sunday March 01 2015, @10:21PM

          by vux984 (5045) on Sunday March 01 2015, @10:21PM (#151654)

          Are people really this fucking blind? The original photo is crappy, yes, but it's not so crappy that I can't see the dress, see that it's the same as the Amazon dress, and it even looks like the exact same colors!!!

          Sorry buddy, I saw white and gold. I had both photos open in a browser side by side, and I *still* saw white and gold. I am not color blind. I have a color corrected wide gamut S-IPS display... I saw white and gold. I couldn't even imagine how any one could see blue and black. The white... sure maybe because of the shadows etc could make the white look like a very pale blue... but the gold was still gold and didn't look black at all.

          Then today, I was reading your post, and felt I had to respond; so I pulled up the photos again. Today I was stunned... I saw blue and black. I thought maybe I was looking at a slightly different photo. I actually dug in my history to pull up exactly what I was looking at yesterday. And it was slightly different. The photo I was looking at yesterday; was just a link to the photo (so firefox displayed it on a black background). When I pulled them up today, I'd pulled it up on a white background embedded within an article. I dug further, the photos themselves were identical. But now even the one in the black background...I can see the blue and black; and I have no idea how i simply couldn't see it yesterday.

          Its not blindness. or perception issues.

          Its a gestalt switch...

          This is my favorite example:

          http://www.moillusions.com/spinning-sihouette-optical-illusion [moillusions.com]

          Which way is she spinning? For some it clockwise for others it counter clockwise. For most of us if we try long enough, we can "flip" and see either. A few of us can do it at will; I can on many such gestalt illusions, but this spinning one... just spontaneously reverses on me from time to time. I can't make it happen by will.

          And for what its worth, my wife just walked into the room, I showed her the photo and she said "white and gold" without a seconds hesitation...

    • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:27AM

      You can have 1,000 people argue and analyze this crappy photo for years, but it all means nothing. That's the only thing that "news" stations are doing. Asking "what do you see?" is not news. Having PhotoShop "experts" pick single pixels is just hand-waving to try and make corrupt data make sense.

      If you put this "quandary" into the context of the rest of the world, it's really not newsworthy at all. Put it under a metaphorical microscope [xkcd.com] and it takes on huge proportions.

      The way to settle the issue is to find the original dress and have a photographer who knows what they're doing take a new photo. That's how you settle it.

      I'd only add that as Lord Balfour pointed out

      Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.

      Take from that what you will.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:34AM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:34AM (#151377)

      I've seen pictures where it looked white and gold, and pictures where it looked blue and black. Methinks it depends on the final edit and not anyone's perception.

  • (Score: 2) by tynin on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:13PM

    by tynin (2013) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:13PM (#151183) Journal

    He plays with all sorts of ways our brains interpret color, intensity, etc and all sorts of optical illusions. I found the talk more enjoyable than reading about people arguing about how what they are seeing is right and everyone else is fucking with them.

    http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see?language=en [ted.com]

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by gman003 on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:19PM

    by gman003 (4155) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:19PM (#151185)

    The physical dress is blue/black. People have identified the specific dress in question, and it's unquestionably blue/black.

    The image of the dress is white/gold, due to massive overexposure and color balance. Open it up in GIMP, check for yourself.

    Some people are able to pick up on the bad white point and see it as blue/black. Others, like me, can't - I note that most of the image is occupied by the dress, so there isn't much context for the eyes to go on.

    Can we consider this argument settled now?

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by pnkwarhall on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:21PM

      by pnkwarhall (4558) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:21PM (#151186)

      Not between me and my wife. Logic didn't work there...

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      • (Score: 2) by Konomi on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:14PM

        by Konomi (189) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:14PM (#151272)

        The theory of why people see it as blue/black is currently: A. They have a poor screen or B. They have a slight form of colour blindness.

        • (Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:11AM

          by tathra (3367) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:11AM (#151365)

          The theory of why people see it as blue/black is currently: A. They have a poor screen or B. They have a slight form of colour blindness.

          except the dress is factually blue and black, so do you mean the people who see it as white/gold are a or b? because i don't see how you can say that the people who are seeing the colors that are actually there have a bad monitor or a form of color blindness.

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:02PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:02PM (#151515)

            Nobody is arguing that the dress itself is not black and blue, they are arguing that the PHOTO OF THE DRESS does not show the colours as black and blue.
            It can be *objectively* demonstrated, using any image of photo-editing software you might like to pick out, that the "black" in the photo is actually a gold colour, and that the "blue" - reported by most to be white - is actually a pale blue.

          • (Score: 2) by khedoros on Monday March 02 2015, @08:34AM

            by khedoros (2921) on Monday March 02 2015, @08:34AM (#151748)
            That's a weak argument. If I've got a selection of color swatches displayed under a sodium vapor lamp, blue and red will look black, white and yellow are likely to look nearly identical, etc. If I take a picture under those conditions, I can't call someone who can't distinguish the red swatch out of them "colorblind", because the information in the image is insufficient. I've got a bunch of color film negatives. I can scan them onto my computer, invert the colors....and they still have a very blue tint to them (from the orange of the film itself). If I'm wearing a red shirt in the image, it'll look almost bright magenta, or maybe purplish. I can't cut out a section of that image and ridicule someone for not being able to discern what the original color was. The visual context isn't present in the image.

            The dress is blue and black, but its appearance in the image is undeniably, objectively, and measurably white and gold, due to tricks of the lighting. Some people find enough visual context in the image for their brain to do a color correction to perceive washed-out black and blue. Some people don't, and see the uncorrected colors. It's a silly thing to argue about.
    • (Score: 1) by wantkitteh on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:45PM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:45PM (#151202) Homepage Journal

      I think there is some merit to the psychovisual interpretation aspects of the question, but I haven't seen anyone take into account the fact that individual screens will represent the colours in the image in a different way. I suspect this would alter some of the visual cues everyone's been going on about sufficiently to account for a lot of the difference in opinion.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:34PM

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:34PM (#151279) Journal

        You could open both images in two browser windows side by side..... on the same physical screen.

        http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61lcZeEZEPL._UL1500_.jpg [images-amazon.com]

        http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2015/02/tumblr_nkcjuq8Tdr1tnacy1o1_500.jpg [washingtonpost.com]

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        • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:00AM

          by wantkitteh (3362) on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:00AM (#151292) Homepage Journal

          lolwut? I'm theorising that differences in colour representations between displays might have a significant effect on colour perception in edge cases like this. I have no idea what you're thinking.

          • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:49AM

            by Whoever (4524) on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:49AM (#151331) Journal

            I'm theorising that differences in colour representations between displays might have a significant effect on colour perception in edge cases like this.

            I tried playing with the color and other settings for my monitor and could not get it to appear anything other than light blue and dirty brown. No white and gold for me.

        • (Score: 1) by t-3 on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:58AM

          by t-3 (4907) on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:58AM (#151404)

          Amazon is definitely black and blue. The other pic looks gold/brown and white to me, but my mom and dad both said they saw black and blue. Is this some kind of benign mass color-blindness?

          • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:32AM

            by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:32AM (#151424) Journal

            Were they standing there looking over your shoulder at your computer?

            Because I've realized that its impossible to but those two pictures side by side on the SAME MONITOR had have people see different things without some biological thing going on.

            There is no way you can put a swatch of BLACK next to GOLD and not have it be apparent to the most casual observer.
            http://s22.postimg.org/w621krqdd/You_are_blind.png [postimg.org]

            This isn't a discussion about over or under exposure. Its two images side by side taken as given.
            Its not about lighting conditions, viewing it side-on or at an angle. Just look at the above image.
            Print it off.

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      • (Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:27AM

        by Ryuugami (2925) on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:27AM (#151310)

        I haven't seen anyone take into account the fact that individual screens will represent the colours in the image in a different way.

        AFAIK, lots of people have thought about that, as it's the most obvious solution. Alas, even when viewing it on the same screen, the answers differ. For example: [vice.com]

        I sent Dr. Neitz the link to the Tumblr post and asked him to tell me what color he saw. "White and gold," he told me flatly. "What is it you're asking?"
        After I explained that I saw the dress as blue and black, he said he wanted to ask one of the students working in his vision lab for a second opinion. "Blue and black," the student replied. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.

        To board the speculation train, my guess is it has to do with how many bad photos you've seen. There is no way in hell you could see the gold parts as black, unless you were conditioned by thousands of photos where something you knew was black looked gold.

        --
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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:01AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:01AM (#151339)

          To board the speculation train, my guess is it has to do with how many bad photos you've seen.

          I was thinking that too.

          There is no way in hell you could see the gold parts as black, unless you were conditioned by thousands of photos where something you knew was black looked gold.

          But I came to the exact opposite conclusion. I'm very sensitive to black-point miscalibration, I see it in badly encoded movies all the time - even straight from the studio they occasional fuck-up the black point, set it too high like it is in this photo. I use a PC to play all the video I watch on tv. One of the main reasons I do that is for the ability to correct messed up black levels. So, based on my experience with such things I was expecting you to say that people who have seen a lot of that would recognize it as black and blue because they have experience with that sort of error - as I do.

          However, I have seen it as gold and white when it was thumbnailed next to some text on a page with white background.

      • (Score: 1) by vux984 on Monday March 02 2015, @04:31AM

        by vux984 (5045) on Monday March 02 2015, @04:31AM (#151719)

        ut I haven't seen anyone take into account the fact that individual screens will represent the colours in the image in a different way.

        I had it open on an S-IPS color corrected display, and saw it white gold for an entire day, despite knowing it was actually blue black. Next day I looked at the same picture on the same screen ... suddenly I saw the blue/black "interpretation" and couldn't figure out how I'd missed it before.

        While display accuracy/quality definitely will be a factor, I'm chalking it up to an optical illusion / gestalt switch. I posted another example in another post.

    • (Score: 2) by DrMag on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:48PM

      by DrMag (1860) on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:48PM (#151260)

      There's another aspect to this too: everyone is looking at this photo on LCD screens. Pull up the photo on such a screen and move your head around. You will see very clearly that from one angle the dress is clearly blue/black, while from another it is clearly white/gold. The image is very poorly done and not a good representation of reality. In addition, the types of screens we use ubiquitously today tweak that balance depending on what angle you're looking from.

      I agree that the argument needs to stop, though; there are far more important things to discuss.

      • (Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:44PM

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:44PM (#151283) Journal

        Doesn't matter if the image is poorly done or not.

        What we all have is the image, the same image, and maybe different monitors.

        So I pasted them together, Amazon on left, Question-Dress on right.
        http://s22.postimg.org/w621krqdd/You_are_blind.png [postimg.org]

        Anybody sees these as the same has a visual defect.

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:31AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:31AM (#151398)

        There's another aspect to this too: everyone is looking at this photo on LCD screens.

        I thought maybe the same thing. Until I showed it to my wife on my LCD screen. No matter what angle she looked at it it appears to her as white/gold. It is blue/brownish to me. When I told her I saw it as a lightish blue color she thought I was nuts.

        There is a bit more here than an optical illusion or LCD angle.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @12:51AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @12:51AM (#151687)

          Showed my wife the picture again. "now that one is blue". "its the same picture" "waaaah your messing with me" Still the same shade of blue every time for me...

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:00PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:00PM (#151266)

      I have no fucking idea what you're talking about. The dress in the crappy overexposed photo is still obviously blue and black. I don't need to open it in GIMP, I can just crop out the whole background and look at a piece of the dress by itself: it's blue and black.

      • (Score: 2, Disagree) by frojack on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:29AM

        by frojack (1554) on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:29AM (#151314) Journal

        Try this: http://s22.postimg.org/w621krqdd/You_are_blind.png [postimg.org]

        If both are blue and black your monitor is defective.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:07AM

          by linuxrocks123 (2557) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:07AM (#151361) Journal

          The one on the right looks blue and gold or orange. The one on the left looks blue and black. In no case can I force myself to see the bad photo as white and gold, just a lighter blue.

          The crappiness made the black look gold and the blue look lighter, but still not white. Where are people getting "white and gold" from?

          Additionally, the vendor of the dress needs to capitalize on this by making a white and gold version. That would probably be a pretty dress, actually.

        • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday March 02 2015, @03:21PM

          by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 02 2015, @03:21PM (#151901) Journal

          Have you (and others) considered why you're letting this rile you up?

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    • (Score: 1) by mja on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:14AM

      by mja (1137) on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:14AM (#151346) Journal

      > Both answers are correct

      I've seen it both ways, a washed out black+blue in the afternoon on a bright sunny winter day. Gold+white is now at night under a not so bright 5w LED lamp. Same monitor.

      Currently I am unable to see the black+blue. I'll check tomorrow, in bright light, whether it changes again. I guess my brain is more happy to apply an overexposition interpretation, when my room is full of overexposition.

      • (Score: 2) by tynin on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:39AM

        by tynin (2013) on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:39AM (#151426) Journal

        I had the same thing occur. During the daylight hours, the dress looked white and gold. Right now, middle of the night, same exact monitor, looking at the same picture again, it is clearly blue and black.

        During the day my room was much brighter all around. Right now at night, my room has a single light on off to the side, but otherwise dark.

        This is just an optical illusion dealing with ambient brightness and how your eyes adjust in those conditions.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:25PM (#151190)

    Crawling in my skin
    These wounds they will not heal
    Fear is how I fall
    Confusing what is real

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:07PM (#151239)

      Lincoln Park. Now that's a band I haven't heard of in a very long time!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:33AM (#151316)

      I feel sorry for the sap that modded me "spam", I'm dead on-topic.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:06AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:06AM (#151340)

        The modding has been abysmal here lately. Lots of great comments get modded down for no reason. There seriously needs to be a way to get rid of these abusive moderators.

      • (Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:57AM

        by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:57AM (#151388) Journal

        I noticed the spam mod, too. It has been undone and, seeing as I have mod points at the moment, I modded it up, too.

        --
        Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:00AM

        by dry (223) on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:00AM (#151421) Journal

        How? To me it looks totally off topic. I wouldn't bother modding it but I definitely skimmed over it as it is off topic to me.

  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:37PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:37PM (#151196) Homepage

    Is the Dalek on the left red or yellow?

    http://horman.net/avisynth/dalek.php [horman.net]

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bytram on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:57PM

      by Bytram (4043) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:57PM (#151290) Journal

      Here's the geek version of the question:

      Is the Dalek on the left red or yellow? http://horman.net/avisynth/dalek.php [horman.net]

      Here's the geek answer:

      Yes

      =)

    • (Score: 2) by Kell on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:49AM

      by Kell (292) on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:49AM (#151355)

      Orange, obviously.

      --
      Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by SlimmPickens on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:01PM

    by SlimmPickens (1056) on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:01PM (#151209)

    Is it hot or not?

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:32PM (#151216)

    This crap belongs anywhere but here.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:41PM (#151220)

      i agree. we should always take the bike cos the naked chick's clothes probably wouldn't fit anyway

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:56PM (#151227)

      This crap belongs anywhere but here.

      A popular example of psychometric color perception is not only topical but geeky.
      That you can't recognize it is a indictment of you, not the story.

      • (Score: 1) by chucky on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:04PM

        by chucky (3309) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:04PM (#151269)

        The original poster is right. We've obviously sorted out all problems, because if this is the most important thing to deal with, the world must be a happy place.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:46PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:46PM (#151286)

          > because if this is the most important thing to deal with

          Yes, everything posted to Soylent is the most important thing to deal with at the time it is posted.
          Really, what kind of self-important fucktards are you guys?

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by dry on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:27AM

          by dry (223) on Sunday March 01 2015, @05:27AM (#151423) Journal

          Actually the fact that different people perceive reality differently is important. Look at politics, there are authoritarian types who perceive reality quite differently from non-authoritarian types as well as the left vs right wingers perception of reality.
          The fact that different people can look at the identical thing and see totally different things is important.

          • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Sunday March 01 2015, @04:16PM

            by TheLink (332) on Sunday March 01 2015, @04:16PM (#151549) Journal

            To me it's not interesting that people see it differently. What I found interesting is there are people who perceive it differently at different times - same screen same pic same lighting, but they switch from seeing white gold to blue black or vice versa!

            On a related note: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2/ [businessinsider.com]

            Until relatively recently in human history, “blue” didn’t exist.
            As the delightful Radiolab episode “Colors” describes, ancient languages didn’t have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the color, there’s evidence that they may not have seen it at all.

            FWIW I'm not so confident that "no one" could see blue till modern times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_in_Judaism [wikipedia.org]
            http://biblehub.com/exodus/24-10.htm [biblehub.com]
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upulvan [wikipedia.org]

            But it's interesting if the claims are true that the Himba tribe can't tell the difference between blue and green but can tell the difference between different greens. I would have thought that they'd have seen blue as a different shade of green and not the same as the rest (so I'd like to see someone else try to reproduce this).

            Did they put all different shades of "green" to them (including the blue) and the Himba couldn't pick the odd one out? Or did they put the same greens and a blue that somehow the Himba perceived as the same green. The former makes more sense to me.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:02PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:02PM (#151268)

      This isn't informative, it's stupid. This is an entirely valid topic, and very interesting because it shows how horrifically poor so many peoples' perception of reality is. It's no wonder now that so many people think they've seen ghosts, Bigfoot, aliens, etc. If people can't even see obvious colors on a dress in a poor photo, there's no telling what they'll make up in their heads when they see something in poor lighting.
       

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by chucky on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:19PM

        by chucky (3309) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:19PM (#151275)

        It is informative. This post doesn't belong here. This article floods mainstream media all around the world today. If you wanted to discuss your topic, then I'd say it belongs here: if people can't even see obvious colors on a dress in a poor photo, there's no telling what they'll make up in their heads when they see virtually anything.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:17PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:17PM (#151273) Journal

      Who Fucking Cares What Color It Is???
       
      Nobody. The interesting bit is how people's brains process the information so completely differently.
       
      It's just optics and neroscience, who cares right?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:35AM (#151318)

      This crap belongs *everywhere* but here.

  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by francois.barbier on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:57PM

    by francois.barbier (651) on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:57PM (#151228)

    No !

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:40PM (#151256)

    Hopefully he'll be found out at an agent provocateur soon.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:49AM (#151330)

    There are multiple copies of the picture out there, as near as I can tell. One that I've seen is brown/very light blue (you might call it gold and white. On facebook) and the other is darker blue and black (yahoo).

    It's still a bad photo of an ugly dress.

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:11PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:11PM (#151592) Homepage

    Hell is wrong with you people. The world is huge, there's lots of interesting stuff going on, and yet 50% of all first world countries seem to be entranced in an argument on a poorly-taken photo of a mundane dress. It's like if everyone started discussing in depth all of the metaphysical implications of a single stat tweak in the latest DotA update.

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