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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday February 28 2015, @11:28PM
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.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:44AM
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
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.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:25AM
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
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
Here's the post where you said they were the exact same color:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6328&cid=151265 [soylentnews.org]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @01:08PM
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
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
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
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.