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Simply put, objects appear the same colour even if the light illuminating them changes – a concept known as colour constancy. At the same time, the way the dress is captured on camera could also be playing a significant role in this debate. I see white and gold, although the actual dress is blue and black. But they can perceived as either blue and black or white and gold. Not depending on which display so much, but with LCD displays, depending more on what angle you are looking at. Look at it straight on, and the dress is white and gold.
"What I would suggest is happening is that you are gathering information unconsciously as to where the lighting is," he says. "The information in the picture is ambiguous. People arrive at different interpretations of the lighting in the scene and how light flows...to the dress and eventually the eye. Many omitted their role in the discovery, and used the photograph for commercial uses.
What color is the shoe actually?
The real dress is dark black in the areas that people, including me, see as gold , and the areas that people see as white are in fact dark blue. Even directly in front of a 26" screen centered at eye level. And even after blocking off the obviously over-exposed background. That's what you get when to take a picture with a crap camera in lousy lighting - something ambiguous. The image spread like wildfire and, from Facebook to Twitter to media sites, everyone is mystified. In aBuzzfeed survey, 74 percent saw white and gold, while the other 26 percent saw blue and black. Researchers also found that older people and women were more likely to report seeing ‘The Dress’ as white and gold, while younger people were more likely to say it was black and blue.
When Dr. Webster inverted the colors of the dress, 95 percent of his participants said they saw the colors yellow and black. Dr. Conway asked participants to use a digital color wheel to match a color pixel with what they thought they saw on the dress. His team then used that information to stitch together two visualizations of the dress based on the pixels that people chose. Another mindblowing creation by Kitoaka shows a girl with two different coloured eyes - which are actually both grey.
Is the black and blue dress fake?
According to the most recent internet sources, it now appears the dress really is blue and black. The mystery may be solved, but the fascination with how we all see the dress differently continues. This dress is perfect for any special occasion so you can feel confident, glamorous, and comfortable in this elegant design. This mermaid fit dress features an off shoulder sleeves, gold embroidered bodice and sweetheart neckline. Penzo told ABC News that the jacket is actually baby blue and white, but still took to Tumblr to enlist the help of the social media users. “When the green light is projected onto the white shoelaces, they will come off as green.
That being said, if you look at the one place in the picture that doesn't appear to suffer as much from color imbalance / over-exposure , It's a cow pattern print. Curiously, the xkcd comic doesn't fool my eyes at all. There isn't actually enough information in the picture to make that call. When I see stuff like that, my brain corrects the image for me. What's unique about this is it's not made to trigger two different intrepretations in one person, but instead by chance triggeres quite evenly the different intrepretations in different people, leading to big debates.
The Science Behind the Dress
Different perspectives, different facets of the same diamond, in the end we have to decide if we want to be blue black or white gold or just enjoy the dress. Because of the deeper blue hue, the brain sees the blue half as white and the black part as gold. People who perceive the right black and blue may be seeing the outfit under artificial, yellow-lit lighting. Lighting like this makes colors appear more green than they are in reality. Thus far, research suggests that the difference arises because you use your brain differently.
Compare the disputed "blue/white" parts of the image to an actual grey of the same intensity side-by-side and I don't there's any way someone with normal eyesight could fail to see the difference. You actually need the overexposed background there to fool your brain into thinking the dress is underexposed to see the blue as white, and the black as gold. The question is what we see in the photo, not what the dress ACTUALLY is- we can't know that because all we are allowed to see is a PHOTO of the dress, not the actual dress. And it is obvious the camera white balance and exposure is way off, trying to compensate for something, resulting in a photo with a probably very false representation. For you, the XKCD one isn't extreme enough to push you in different directions. Interestingly high level intrepretation has a big part.
The two-tone dress, left, alongside an ivory and black version, made by Roman Originals, that has sparked a global debate on Twitter over what color it is on display in Birmingham, England on Feb. 27, 2015. And now that the digital age is here, there are subtle differences between how something can appear to you on a television screen versus a computer monitor versus a cell phone, Calkins said. "Vision just barely starts in the eye," Lystad said. So we can recognize the same objects in different light conditions, our brains tweak the way we see things, he added.
As we’ve seen in this case of The Dress, colours can be entirely subjective and change depending on assumptions your brain makes without you fully understanding why. It can also depending “on the viewing history of the individual observer”, with what you see being based on your past memories and experiences with similar shades. This explains why there was such a divide when it came to The Dress, with everyone’s brains reacting differently to a unique combination of colours in the photo.
