Althouse: "But for the past half-day, people across social media have been arguing about whether a picture depicts a perfectly nice bodycon dress as blue with black lace fringe or white with gold lace fringe."

February 27, 2015

"But for the past half-day, people across social media have been arguing about whether a picture depicts a perfectly nice bodycon dress as blue with black lace fringe or white with gold lace fringe."

"And neither side will budge. This fight is about more than just social media—it’s about primal biology and the way human eyes and brains have evolved to see color in a sunlit world."

34 comments:

Vet66 said...: Primal biology limits me to the observation that the female model is shapely and a delight to behold. Anyone with an ounce of fashion sense would see the original color depicted in the middle photo is most desirable.; 2/27/15, 5:56 AM
Bob R said...: White/gold for me. Interesting illusion.; 2/27/15, 5:56 AM
Xmas said...: The original dress is blue and black. The person that owns the dress posted a different picture taken at a wedding.

The "tricky" photo looks like it was taken with a cell phone in a dark room with an incandescent bulb backlighting the dress. The poor camera's auto white balance went crazy.

I think part of the problem is the break between those that have trained themselves to look at shitty cell phone pics to make out the "true" colors and those that recognize a poorly done photo and don't try to subconciously interpret the colors.; 2/27/15, 6:17 AM
tim in vermont said...: You set the white balance in Kelvin. I almost said degrees Kelvin, but that would have set off another spat ;)

If you look at pictures of the Arctic designed to scare us on global warming, you can see that they set the white balance a little warmer, to make it look like a warm spring day, as if Global Warming was about increased sunlight.

Because I spent so much time mastering white balance, I can't get excited about the main topic.; 2/27/15, 6:19 AM
campy said...: Ask republicans what color Obama thinks it is.; 2/27/15, 6:30 AM
tim in vermont said...: Ask liberals what color Walker thinks it is; 2/27/15, 6:39 AM
Phil 314 said...: It's like asparagus and urine; 2/27/15, 6:56 AM
rastajenk said...: Anyone who's played around with photoshop sliders even a little bit has seen this kind of effect. The story had a so-what feel when it got into RGB values and evolutionary traits. I figured the piece was supposed to be about silly internet wars or something sociologically current. Guess I was wrong.; 2/27/15, 7:06 AM
MayBee said...: I can see the blue (I would read it as either light blue or white), but I can't see black on the lace. I think it must be cheap dye that reflects light oddly. If it is really black, that is.; 2/27/15, 8:01 AM
SayAahh said...: Given current events please explain how this is relevant..to anything!; 2/27/15, 8:12 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Enh. To me it looks like the mass of the dress is pale blue, and the lace is gold. How anyone could take the lace to be black is beyond me.; 2/27/15, 9:09 AM
dbp said...: The whole issue is resolved when we remember a bit of epistemology:

When we say something is a certain color it is not what we really mean. What we really mean is that a thing appears a way we can describe under the present conditions.

So for instance, I might say that my eyes are green because under most conditions, that is how they appear. Certainly under some conditions, like complete darkness, they are not green, or any other color.; 2/27/15, 9:34 AM
Fred Drinkwater said...: One of the first things I learned working on laser printer color calibrations was: There is NO SUCH THING as WHITE PAPER.
What to know what color something is? Ask a well-engineered spectrophotometer.
OTOH, since we were selling to actual, you know, HUMAN users, there were sometimes important subjective sensory issues, esp. relating to specularity, and the overlap of the colored toners / dyes with the human retinal spectral responses. Tricky business.; 2/27/15, 10:19 AM
Fred Drinkwater said...: "Kelvins", Tim, not "kelvin". :-); 2/27/15, 10:23 AM
Clyde said...: When I looked at it from the top, it looked like it was white-and-gold. When I looked at it from the bottom, though, I saw the blue-and-black. Very strange.; 2/27/15, 10:41 AM
Fritz said...: It' s bluer in my left eye.; 2/27/15, 10:53 AM
L Day said...: The only people that know what color the actual dress is are those that have seen the dress in sunlight. Everybody else just sees an image of the dress on their computer screen. On my computer's screen that image is a pale blue and muddy light brown. What's all the fuss about?; 2/27/15, 10:55 AM
Scott M said...: It's very simple. If you convert the colors of the two images into HTML color codes and then compare the code, taking only the differences and then converting it back to text, you will see that the dress is a cookbook and that you're going to be sorted into appetizer or main course depending on what color you saw.

I'm not looking.; 2/27/15, 11:06 AM
Gabriel said...: Color is surprisingly complicated, because it is not physically present in the light. It is the brain's interpretation of light wavelengths, but wavelengths are completely described by one number and are therefore monochrome.

All color is "false color"--it is the human brain's interpretation of the effect that light has on human eyes.

An alien species, or dogs for that matter, may not find that "yellow and blue make green", because they don't have the appropriate receptors, and so human paintings are going to look quite different to them.; 2/27/15, 11:06 AM
Revenant said...: White/gold for me too. Neat.; 2/27/15, 11:40 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: WHO CARES?!; 2/27/15, 11:40 AM
Kyzer SoSay said...: I posted on my FB timeline: "Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes discussing this dress and what color it is or isn't needs to find a wall and repeatedly smash their head into it until they can't see in color anymore."

IMO, that goes for everyone.; 2/27/15, 11:42 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: This is/was fascinating. I had not known it was possible for two people viewing the same image on the same device in the same room to see entirely different colors. (If you haven't read the article and think this is about everyone making a different judgement about what to call the colors in the image, you're missing it. People are actually seeing entirely different colors.) Fun stuff.

Also a fun demonstration of how data can contradict common sense. Most people conceive of color as a fact. Then you encounter a bit of data, like this, that says, "That's not true in every case." Great stuff!; 2/27/15, 12:05 PM
Think said...: Kyzernick, you have spent much time saying it doesn't matter. Posting to facebook, posting comments here. You care!; 2/27/15, 12:15 PM
tim in vermont said...: On Freeman Hunt's recommendation, I went back to the picture, and if you look at it long enough, and try to perceive it differently, the image goes between gold and white, which is what it looked like to me at first, and blue and black, which is what it looks like to me now. Unless I try to consciously shift it.

It is sort of of like the Spinning Dancer Illusion where different people see the same dancer as spinning in opposite directions, and if you try hard, you can get it to seem to change directions at will.; 2/27/15, 12:33 PM
Fernandinande said...: Xkcd: Dress Color"

(Yes, they're the same).; 2/27/15, 1:05 PM
Fernandinande said...: tim in vermont said...
...the Spinning Dancer Illusion

I'd never seen that one before (to me it looks clockwise because of the shadow of the extended foot - tho I think it switched briefly once).

Most interesting were the two pics at the bottom (click on one, then switch between), which had some lines added to reinforce the appearance of each direction.; 2/27/15, 1:21 PM
harrogate said...: "Given current events please explain how this is relevant..to anything!"

There akways have been and always will be "super serious events" to worry about. That doesn't mean we should only always be thinking about those things (even if we all agreed on what things those are, which we don't).

Optical curiosity, a bit of pop-science. It was sort of fun watching people get into it.; 2/27/15, 3:22 PM
MeatPopscicle1234 said...: Wow... I guess this is a real thing.. Dark blue and black for me, not even a hint of white or gold.; 2/27/15, 3:29 PM
Birches said...: I've enjoyed spending too much time on the dress (first it was gold and whitish now it is blue and black and I can't get the gold back!) and the llamas. No harm done, but the more conspiracy theory part of me wonders who is pushing this kind of viral craziness. Is it spontaneous or are there others who are figuring out how to manipulate what goes viral?; 2/27/15, 4:20 PM
Birches said...: I can only get the dancer clockwise. What do you need to focus on to get her to change direction?; 2/27/15, 4:21 PM
Birches said...: Oh, I've got it now. Weird.; 2/27/15, 4:24 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: The original question is bogus.
"What color is this dress?"
What dress? All I see is my computer's rendering on my monitor of a photo of unknown provenance (i.e. with an unknown set of transforms imposed between the original and the JPEG file.)
OTOH, I used to charge $ 300 / hour to repair such confusions, so ...; 2/27/15, 9:03 PM
Anonymous said...: All I see is white and gold. And for the life of me I can't figure out how people are seeing black and blue.

All three of my boys, I showed them the picture separately, and all three said without hesitation, black and blue. Like it was a stupid question (I asked them, what two colors you see in this dress?). The tone of their answer had a sort of "Duh" feel to it. My daughter also said black and blue.

My wife says white and gold.

And I see white and gold.

So odd why all four of my children said the same thing and the adults saw something different.; 2/27/15, 9:53 PM