I hear Yani
this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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I don't even understand the point of this. I see a black dress with a blue apron and a yellow dress with a white apron. Is that wrong?
The blue and the yellow are the same color (cover up the rest of the picture, there is no gradient in the bar). Same thing for the white and the blue, isn't that strange?
No, when I cover up different areas I see black and blue or yellow and white.
The top and bottom are still uncovered so the illusion is still operative.
Let me be more clear - I cover the ENTIRE IMAGE except for like an inch opening, and it's still eiher black/blue or yellow/white. I can otherwise see the whole color spectrum quite well, so I dunno what's going on but that's how it is. Not a big deal though, I read up on the original dress thing and my curiosity is satisfied, but thanks for replying.
Or maybe remove the blue and yellow pieces of glass in front of them?
Can someone who sees the dress as black and blue (on the original image ) try to explain to me what leads their brain to believe that the light source is blasting the dress?
To me, background seem to be very bright, and also the clothes that are just behind the dress seems to be illuminated, thus leading my brain to think that the dress is in front of the light source (dress would be in the shade), so the logic that the dress color looks altered due to bright light just doesn't compute in my brain.
I'm betting that this is not how dress would look in real life and that crappy camera has a lot to do with how that image turned out.
But I will never understand how people can look at it and say that it's black and blue, because I never managed to see it as such.
I'm also in team gold and white. Just like you, my brain perceived the source of light is from the back and part of the dress that I saw is shaded.
What helped me see the dress as black and blue is trying to imagine a zoomed out image of this photo where the dress in uncropped, then force myself to believe that it is a brightly lit clothing shop. Also I tried to see the background as a mirror that reflect the light, so my brain can finally process that the lighting is not exclusively from behind the dress.
Your screen on your phone is RGB. Red Green Blue pixels. There is no yellow light ever being sent to your eyes. So if you were to look at a yellow square on your phone the pixels are RGB in a mix convincing your brain it is yellow.
So when you get a blue dress with warm yellow light, the pixels on your phone tries to convey that bit of yellow
Different devices will show it more or less.
If you printed out the picture there would be no illusion.
I have no idea what must be wrong with someone's eyes to call that dress white and gold. I mean it was always a stretch, the shadow/lens on top of it would have to be fucking BLUE to color it something similar.
Even then it sounds stupid to go with that stretch of it being white and gold.
My working theory is that people who saw it gold and white were exposed to lead.
I struggle to see it as black and blue, the white and gold interpretation has been the one I've almost always seen
It's not a stretch by any means
I feel like this post illustrates pretty cleanly how someone would see that
The background is not blue in the original though?
Exactly lol. The rest of the scene had clear context that the image was overexposed and the white balance was too warm.
Anyone that understands photography instantly understood what was happening in that image. I've had people try to fight me and tell me I'm wrong about that, but I've been a professional photographer/videographer for over 15 years. Quickly identifying a technical issue with an image like that is like breathing to me. I do it every single time I take a picture, so over 10,000 a day on average. All I can say is trust me. that image was overexposed and too warm, You can tell by the way it is in the background, and if you can't see that then my words won't help you.
Shadows do generally overrepresent the color blue due to rayleigh scattering.
Brains are also very quick to make assumptions and also very rigid about keeping them. The spinning dancer illusion, even when you already know you can and have seen it spinning both ways, it can be difficult to switch percepts.
I was exposed to lead and yet I only saw blue and black.
There goes my theory! Damn! :)
I was able, very briefly and not since, to see white and gold. Otherwise, I thought they were all crazy.
Same! I wish I could flit between like I can with most illusions. I'm just happy I know I saw it the other way once at least.
It's a weird type of illusion because even knowing the truth I can only see the white and gold, even when the lighting in the photo is adjusted to correct the overexposure my brain still reads it as white.
and they were roommates
I had to copy the image in Paint and select the colors to believe they were the same. Goddamned witchcraft, I say!
Paint is compromised, they are in on it!
I can see the dark detail lines on the bottom of the dress really easy on the right but I can hardly see them at all on the left
The mask overlaying the blue/black dress is lightening the color, causing the faint lines to become fainter, whereas the color is darkened on the masked area on the right, making the lines more distinct.
This is ridiculous and I hate it.
Goddam! Thank you!
That kind of explains the gold or black dress!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
I can for the life of me only see it as white and gold, and I have really struggled trying to understand how others can see it as blue and black? I bet the picture you show here is a result of the research the picture of the dress initiated. It can't be a coincidence that the illusion you posted also is made with dresses.
Correct interpretation: blue and black in an overexposed image
Misinterpretation: yellow and gold in an underexposed image.
The area of the picture that isn't the dress is washed out in white and the overexposure is even bleeding over top right corner.
Anyone misinterpreting must either be bad with visual context or not understand photography.
tilt your phone until almost parallel to ground and look at it from eye level
I tried, it doesn't make the slightest difference. But thanks anyway.
The dress was revealed to be, in fact, blue and black.
On 28 February 2015, Roman Originals announced that they would make a single white and gold dress for a Comic Relief charity auction.[31]
Oh man, MAJOR missed opportunity there! They sold out of the blue and black ones like overnight, they should have fast-tracked a white and gold version production to hit the shelves ASAP and enjoyed the flood of purchases.
Yes that's kind of part of the link I gave.
But if you take a color picker, you can clearly see the RGB values from the image to match white and gold.
I did the color pocket thing too, and its result was blue and orange. Not super helpful to this particular global controversy, but was worth a shot.
IMO the color of the actual physical dress is kinda moot: photographed (poorly), digitized, and presented to the world on billions of screens with completely different settings for things like color saturation, and the color of the thing that hits our eyes is not necessarily indicative of the color of the original.
The color of the dress in the photo was not the same as the color of the photographed dress.
It was white and gold! sprints away
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It's such a strange thing. For most of the illusions I can trick my brain to perceive both variants. This one is clearly black and blue. I can see that the black parts isolated can appear golden in the light, but for the life of me I can't see it any other than blue. Brains are weird.
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I was for quite a while like "what is so suprising about two different sets of colors"
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