Who remembers this?

I'm still convinced this is the biggest troll. It's clearly white and gold

You can literally sample the rgb values and see it's blue and black
Edit: am I part of the joke here??? It's clearly blue and black...
- am I part of the joke here??? It's clearly blue and black...
  The objective fact is…it is a blue and black dress. Other photos of the same dress show that.
  But I cannot, for the life of me, see how anyone can possibly get that from this photo. Sample the RGB values all you want and it clearly is not black in this photo. The exposure and white balance have messed around with it so much it is incomprehensible to me how anyone can see it as blue and black.
- You’re good. It’s black and blue. At a pinch, maybe blue and black.
- Where the hell is the black supposed to be? Nothing is that dark here. I can easily accept blue, white, or gold, but there's clearly no black.
- You can sample the colours and see it’s white with a very light blue tinge and gold.
  People who see it as blue and black are (correctly in this case) auto-correcting for the yellow light as the dress itself is black and blue.
  Whereas people who see it as white and gold are (subconsciously) assuming a blue shadow and seeing the pixels as they’re displayed.
- You can literally sample the rgb values
  It doesn't matter. This phenomenon can be explained by something called color constancy.
  I remember some versions of this image where I could literally switch between perceptions at will, when I imagined different surrounding light temperatures/environments.
  It's a subjective perception.
- What is global illumination from sky lighting again ??
- It's very clearly white and gold.
- Color is created in the brain, not in the pixel values. Pixel values often have no correlation to the color that's produced in the brain.
I've always really liked this explanation image you can find on Wikipedia page for it. Essentially, people who see white and gold are mistaking the lighting to be cold and blue-tinted, rather than warm and yellow-tinted.
The portions inside the boxes are the exact same colors, you can easily check this with a color picker.
- Ah, so white and gold folks are, indeed, mistaken.
  Thanks!
- As in using the colour picker on the image and finding the corresponding code? That's actually an explanation that I can get behind. Classic example of trust your instrument.
  I see the dress as gold and white, no matter ehow hard I try to see the other side of the coin.
- Yeah, this is the best explanation for why this 'controvesy' happened.
  Certain background lighting conditions and colors can significantly alter the color and luminance of certain objects in that lighting environment, which otherwise, in less extreme lighting environments, look different.
  Even just understanding basic color theory can show you how to make a color pallette out of either mutually complimentary colors, or highly contrasting colors... and how humans largely, (though apparently to differing extents and by different means), interpret a total color space by comparing and contrasting the colors within that space to each other, as opposed to against some objective reference point of all possible colors.
  The other part of this explanation is that...
  People were not talking about the same image.
  Someone would argue one way, another person argues another way, and then someone else would do some kind of photoshop job to argue for one side, and their explanation and reasoning and justification would get lost, and ok now you have multiple images spreading around and being argued over by the same population that would...
  ... in 5 years, essentially start a civil war over the idea of whether or not it makes sense to wear a mask during an epidemic of a virus transmitted in the aerosolized spittle from sneezes, coughs, and even just breathing.
  But yeah, when this was an ongoing thing, I'd have multiple different people in different camps... sending me actually different images, and it took a while to figure out which one was the actual original origin image.
  Which of course I had to do on my own, but critical thinking and basic research skills, an impulse to verify the base assumptions of a claim or argument... many people do not know how to do this, or only selectively do it with things that challenge their pre-existing notions.
- Very interesting. I wonder how big the effect of culture is on how people perceive this situation
- If theyre the same color, why can i see the black outlines way clearer in the yellow dress w/ blue tint side ?
- I wonder if could be an age component, too? Artificial lighting used to be a lot more yellow. "Party" lighting tends to be more blue.
- What the actual fuck? When this first came around, my eyes saw white and gold, in this post it looks like overexposed brown and blue, and looking at this graphic is fucking with my head! Brains are wee photo editors, aren't they?
- But the dress in the photo looks like it's in the shadow so it's a fair assumption that the lighting would be blue-tinted.
- I don't understand this, can you explain it?
  In the left I see a black and blue dress with a yellow box. The dress inside the box is still black and blue (with yellow tint).
  In the right side I see a white and gold dress with a blue. box. Inside the box the dress is white and gold, with a blue tint.
  What am i supposed to see here? What is this telling me?
Stop trolling me. It's blue and black. I could never figure how people might perceive it otherwise.
- They see the blue as shaded white, and the glossy black has enough yellow reflected in it that they think it is shadowy gold. Basically, you’re seeing the dress as if it’s lit from the front. You see the colors as blue and black, because that’s what’s on the screen. But other people’s brains decide that the dress is backlit, so the colors facing the camera are actually shaded.
Same, I always assume the ppl. Saying it's black and blue are trolling me.
I can see both so I promise you it's not a troll, but it is a wild phenomenon.
When the discussion started, I saw white and gold too. Then, at some point, I saw blue and black and since then I've never been able to see it as white and gold again.
And you are obviously right. I can see it with my own eyes.
Then you clearly have a brain/eye defect because not only does it look black and blue, but the actual dress in real life is black and blue.

Because no one has posted the other photos:

And this is a photo of the same dress taken under proper lighting:

Not even the brighter version looks white and gold to me. It's so obviously blue and black, y'all are insane.
- I understand doubting the white but seeing black in that gold was what I could never buy. To me it seemed like light blue-grey with matte gold.
- I'm the opposite, the OG photo reads white and gold no matter what edits I see. Even after seeing the dress in proper light the OG is still white and gold.
- I’m with you. This viral moment never made sense to me cuz I can never see anything else even with my wildest imagination.
- Let's do this again!
  Seriously WTF??? It's freakin white.and.gold.
- When i first opened the image, it was undeniably white/gold to me, and I could not trick myself into seeing black/blue. After looking at the HQ image above, now I can not see white/gold anymore.
  Edit: After writing this comment, it is back to white/gold.
- What on earth are you talking about.
  Only the 'darker' picture looks remotely blue and black
- Same, I see light blue and still black
- Right? To be white and gold the dress would need to be in shadow, but it's clearly in light.
- Zoom in or sample the colours. They’re not blue and black.
No way, really ? I really thought it was always white and gold. This cannot be the same dress, I do not trust my eyes anymore
The second photo is supposed to be the same dress? Looks like an homage, aka knock-off attempt to me. What happened to the shoulders?
- I’ll double-check the source of the second photo, but it looks like the original picture is taken from the back and the second is taken from the front.
  Add: Yeah, it’s not the EXACT SAME dress worn to the wedding where the original picture came from, but it is the same design by the same maker.
  …Also, THIS is the source the second photo came from and today I learned that the dress actually did drive people insane! Holy fuck! 😭
  https://sg.news.yahoo.com/man-whose-mother-law-wore-225725928.html
- Doesn't look like the shoulder material is physically part of the dress... it's probably a jacket or shaul.
All three of these look blue and black just with different levels of saturation?? I can understand how people can maybe see the gold, but interpreting the blue as white is baffling to me. Bluer than the day sky.
Even with my phone cranked all the way up it still looks blue to me. I've never been able to see the white and gold version people claim exists.
- Maybe my comment can help
  https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.world/comment/17803266
I have always only seen black and blue, even in the light version my brain doesn't make it gold and white. It's strange to me why people perceive this as gold.
Edit this video was the only one to make me see it https://youtu.be/YB36n00NHBw
- We'll I watched the other video and I finally saw the blue and black. I've always seen white gold but now I don't. Fucking trippy.
Left: blue and black.
Middle: light blue and black.
Right: dark blue and black.
The dress is blue and black. It will never be white or gold. The lighting or saturation doesn't matter.
- Well the pixels themselves are white and gold so…

For your information : the dress is really blue and black, according to the store and manufacturer. The vast majority of people see it as white and gold, but I personally think most people are not used to decrypting overexposed pictures, hence their inability to perceive the right colors.

not used to decrypting overexposed pictures
I used to see it black and blue, now I see it white and gold.
I do photography and often have to work with overexposed pictures
Edit: just looked at it again now its black and blue. Wtf brain
overexposure is not the issue but improper white balance, the camera was probably set for ~6800K but the lighting in the room was ~2700K
I've never seen it at white and gold. Even the brightened photo, while I understand what's happening to make people see white and gold, is still blueish/purple and black to me. Does that mean I have a tumor?
- So closed minded smh
It’s subconscious it’s not something you can learn. If that were the case people would have no issue understanding how others weren’t ‘decrypting’ the photo.
Also the majority see it as blue and black. 30% as white and gold.
The Journal of Vision, a scientific journal about vision research, announced in March 2015 that a special issue about the dress would be published with the title A Dress Rehearsal for Vision Science.
The first large-scale scientific study on the dress was published in Current Biology three months after the image went viral. The study, which involved 1,400 respondents, found that 57 per cent saw the dress as blue and black, 30 per cent saw it as white and gold, 11 per cent saw it as blue and brown, and two per cent reported it as "other". Women and older people disproportionately saw the dress as white and gold. The researchers further found that, if the dress was shown in artificial yellow-coloured lighting, almost all respondents saw the dress as black and blue, while they saw it as white and gold if the simulated lighting had a blue bias.
Another study in the Journal of Vision, by Pascal Wallisch, found that people who were early risers were more likely to think the dress was lit by natural light, perceiving it as white and gold, and that "night owls" saw the dress as blue and black.
A study carried out by Schlaffke et al. reported that individuals who saw the dress as white and gold showed increased activity in the frontal and parietal regions of the brain. These areas are thought to be critical in higher cognition activities such as top-down modulation in visual perception
Wow you figured out how to break JPG encryption? Someone call Alan Turing, we got a prodigy over here
- I'm French, we often use comparable actions verbs even if it's not their real context. More commonly known as the metaphore stylistic device.
- Decrypt is closely related to the word "interpret", which is something I personally interpreted from a history of decrypting English text written by nonnative speakers on the internet. 👍
  The same words often have different meanings in different countries; something you should take into account in case you ever decide to take a German gift from a slim Dutchman.

I still don’t see either. It looks blue and gold to me

Me too!
- Same!
  Strangely enough, I saw it as black and dark blue at first, but then something switched and I've been seeing it as light blue and gold ever since!
THANK YOU
This is the first time I've seen this take upvoted.
Same. Initially white and gold, but now mostly blue and gold, although if I stare at it I can make it change back and forth.

It appears white/gold to me on it's own, I've never been able to see anything different.

Grabbing this specific image and sampling the colours though; they appear more of a grey/brown colour. I can sorta maybe understand blue, but definitely not black.

This is just using Polish photo editor on android:

This is exactly the thing.
Whatever the dress may be in reality, the photo of it that was circulated was either exposed or twiddled with such that the pixels it's made of are indeed slightly bluish grey trending towards white (i.e. above 50% grey) and tanish browny gold.
That is absolutely not up for debate. Those are the color values of those pixels, end of discussion.
Edit to add: This entire debacle is a fascinating case of people either failing to or refusing to separate the concept of a physical object versus its very inaccurate representation. The photograph of the object is not the object: ce n'est pas une robe.
The people going around in this thread and elsewhere putting people down and calling them "stupid" or whatever else only because they know that the physical dress itself is black and blue based on external information are studiously ignoring the fact that this is not what the photograph of it shows. That's because the photograph is extremely cooked and is not an accurate depiction. The debate only exists at all if one party or the other does not have the complete set of information, and at this point in history now that this stupid meme has been driven into the ground quite thoroughly I should hope that all of us do.
It's true that our brains can and will interpret false color data based on either context or surrounding contrast, and it's possible that somebody deliberately messed with the original image to amplify this effect in the first place. But the fact remains that arguing about what the dress is versus how it's been inaccurately depicted is stupid, and anyone still trying that at this late stage is probably doing so in bad faith.
- The "white" pixels are literally blue. The "black" ones can be considered gold due to the lighting.
- Earlier today I was sat in a dark room reading this thread, I looked at the picture above and it clearly had blue tones with warm dark grey. The dress was obviously blue/black.
  I'm sitting outside in the light now, looking at the same picture on the same phone in the same app and now it's white and gold/brown.
  Without going on my pc and colour picking it myself I can't tell what colour the picture really is since my eyes seem all to happy to lie to me about it.
- They're not stupid, their visual cortex just lacks the ability to calibrate to context. You can see in the picture that the scene is very brightly lit. If your visual cortex is in working order, you'll adjust your perception of the colours. The picture reveals that some people struggle to do that.
Why not an American photo editor?
- A) I'm not American
  And
  B) America can go fuck itself until it sorts out it's Nazi problem. I still think Canada should enact a full trade embargo and take our business elsewhere.
Next up: the dress worn by the woman on the right.
The point has never been about the actual pixel color codes. It's about how human perception doesn't follow those objective metrics.
Distilled down, we perceive color and brightness in comparison to the surrounding scene. The checker shadow illusion is a clear example of the same color looking different.
So the color perception on the dress depends on how the brain decides to color correct the white balance of the scene.
- I find it easy to switch back and forth between the two color combinations: If I assume that the scene is in full sun, then the dress looks blue and black. If I assume that it's in the shade, but with a brightly-lit background, then it looks white and gold.
- For the millionth time, the camera perceived it that way, not a human eye.
It's funny how people will keep barking about it even when you slap them in the face with color picker which is mathematical display of the color. There is no "how brain is seeing things". It's literally WHAT THE COLOR IS. To call white with faint blue tint "blue" and what is clearly a "gold" shade can't possibly be black. If photo was heavily manipulated through photo editing or lighting, that doesn't prove anything at all. Or the question was stupid. No one was really asking "what color is the dress", they were asking what colors are on the photo. And photo has no relation to the real dress because of light conditions manipulation or even photo editing.
- This is the color picker in the image you replied to. Do you really think the colors on the left are white and the colors on the right are gold?
- No one was really asking "what color is the dress", they were asking what colors are on the photo.
  This is not my recollection of this at all. Everyone knows what physical colors are on the screen. If so people who see the image as white and gold wouldn't have been shocked/angry to learn the dress is actually blue and black.
You should watch https://youtu.be/bg41XfnIBvk for an explanation on how to properly get the colors from the image.

Don't forget Laurel and Yani!

I like Brainstorm vs Green Needle even better. The're not even the same amount of syllables! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1okD66RmktA
- Ok this one is crazy, because I hear whatever I’m consciously thinking of. “Brainstorm”, “green needle”, “brain needle”, “green storm”. It’s actually tripping me out.
  Btw I still hear “laurel” every time. I can hear “yanny” in the background if I really focus, but I always hear “laurel” as well.
Team Yanny
- I always heard yarrel. Or yarrey, but I don't hear l sound at the start or n sound in the middle. So neither?
i hear Laurel at high volumes and Yanny at low volumes, and if i turn down/up the volume little by little i can hear the same one across all volumes ( brain resets after a few seconds of not listening)
I hear it as "Yammi" and see the dress as light blue and gold.
Of course, both are the only objectively correct answers 😉
I hear both simultaneously at different frequency. Yanny is way higher.
I hear pancaked!
I hate that one because I hear both of them at the same time Dx feels like pure insanity.
And the trainer.
The dress was always blue and black to me (blue and copper tinged black really), but this one keeps switching from grey and mint to pink and white and then back again.

I found this image to be a really good way to distill the issue down into the two different modes or perception:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress#/media/File:Wikipe-tan_wearing_The_Dress_reduced.svg

Oh wild. When I first saw this on lemmy it was white and gold. Then I clicked the image and looked and thought, "yeah, that's what I figured." Then I scrolled up and it was blue and brown. Can see white and gold again. Fun.
- I looked at this a few hours back when the sun was shining. Obviously white and gold, no question. Looked at it again just now after the sun went down and the house was darker. It's blue and black. I can't see how it could be white and gold. I'm not sure if this is some joke and I'm being fucked with here, so I've downloaded the image and I'll take another look when the sun's shining again.
To me the background looks more like the left.
I initially saw black and blue, but after scrolling to the top of this thread yesterday I could only see white and gold and again today, even zooming in.
Immediately switched to black and blue after reading that.
The mind is a fascinating thing.
Edit: Holy crap I'm back to white and gold.

I've only ever seen it as blue and black. I can't force it the other way like I could with Laurel and Yani. Y'all seeing white and gold astound me.

Crazy talk. White and gold only
I still think the white and gold people are trolling.
- Same. But now after all these years, there are enough people in here that are pedants/trolls and flatly saying they can only see white and gold.
  It makes me question my own abilities. Sure, I see the dress for what it actually is, but am I lacking the ability to trick my brain into seeing an illusion? Is that a lack of something like imagination? Am I broken?

ffs now it looks blue and gold. am i dying?

it has always looked light blue-ish, like a periwinkle, and gold to me, as well
I swear this is a gif with very long loop time. I see it black and blue 90% of the time and the its in my feed and bang, white and gold... and I can't change it no matter what I try.

I never really understood the debate. In reality, if you were standing in front of the dress it is black and blue. Now, if you take a digital photo of the dress and post it on the internet as a terribly compressed jpg, with weird white balancing, and brightness/contrast turned up and down it is gold and white. The debate isn't really about the reality of the color of the dress but the reality of a badly edited photo.

It’s more about the colors around it. This image from Wikipedia does a really good job illustrating the effect.
Context is extremely important in identifying color. As Technology Connections tells us, for example, “brown is just orange with context.”
- What always confused me is, the picture clearly seems to be overexposed, which means the blue/black interpretation should be obvious.
And what everyone seemed to omit: the reality of peoples' wildly uncalibrated monitors/phone screens.
- Properly calibrated screen for graphic design here, multiple mobile devices. Never any major variance unless it’s a different image.
if you take a digital photo of the [ ... thing ... ] and post it on the internet as a terribly compressed jpg
That sums up the entirety of the content on a number of popular subs on the R-word site.
Confusing perspective? No. More like confusing JPEG artifacts.
- You used to be able to report shit for not being confusing, but it was placebo at best. That site sucks so much.
Is it, though? Is this dress in the pic only white and gold to everyone who looks at the picture/the original?

I remember seeing different colors on different screens, so I think part of the perception difference are the saturation and brightness settings of your screen

Yeah that definitely has an influence as well. If I tilt my screen I can make it more blue and black, but straight on it's white and gold.
Yeah when I first saw the post, it was white and gold, then I read your comment and turned the brightness off my phone all the way down an now it's black and blue.
- We all are black when the lights go out.
It bothers me how far I had to dig for someone saying this. Obviously this isn’t some deep insight on how people see colors, we are literally not looking at the same washed out photo because we all have different devices with different settings.
This is like those math problems people argue about because someone purposefully wrote it ambiguously. Manufactured problems.

I can never see black and blue. I assume all those who claim to see black and blue are bots. fite me

So people looking at this photograph actually can perceive this to be white and gold? thats utterly wild. And hard to believe.

I've been trying for the past minute and cannot see anything other than white and gold 🤷‍♂️

Back when this went viral, I only saw white and gold. Then one moment it just sorta morphed into blue and black. Now I can't turn it back to white and gold for the love of me.
It's very noisy. In the sense of there being a lot of pixels that would make up either colors. Your eyes and brain try to make sense of the noise and "decide" what color it is. The strongest correlation that seems to exist is the time people get up in the morning. Early risers seem to see white more often, night owls have a tendency for blue. It might be caused by the amount of daylight vs. artificial light that people see throughout their waking hours.
I saw this same post yesterday and the dress was blue and black. Later that day it was gold and white. Today it is gold and white still.
Same phone. Same location in my house. Different times of day though. It kind of fucked with my head though because when the dress meme was going around I only saw it one color (though I don't remember which it was).
I see it as white and gold unless I squeeze my eyes almost shut and then it looks blue.

whats next? are you gonna post who remembers yanny/laurel? bitch be fr

It kills me that no matter what, it is always white and gold for me, EVEN THOUGH REALITY SAYS OTHERWISE!

Yea i never see an ounce of black on there. That's fucking yellow.
I see blue stripes or white if standing in a shadow. But there is no black.
- *yeah, not yea or nay. It isn't a vote.
Brain defect.
- Aren't we all just one big brain defect?

the first time ever I see this image, years ago, I could see both white-gold and black-blue. I don't know why I can only see white-gold now.

but assuming the bright light in the back is warm sun light, I think this is why my brain is more accepting that the blue tint is more of a shaded area from the sun, while the base color is white. the yellow-blue contrast

When this first made the rounds I managed to see the gold-white a few times, but it's almost always blue-black for me.
Same

I only see white gold

Never understood this one, or believed anyone who said they saw black/blue. You can zoom in and colour pick, the colours are measurable and objectively gold and blue-white.

I see white/gold too, and this always fascinated me because I'm wrong. The real dress is black/blue. It's very hard for me to perceive that way, partly due to the bad quality picture, and particularly the background lighting.
The gold is black and the white is a dark blue irl, but in the bad coloring/lighting of the picture, the deep blue is quite washed out. Know that the colors are very washed out, know that the "gold" is black. Focus on the lower left where the colors are closest to true and block out the rest, especially the bright parts. The thick black stripe in the middle can also be a good spot to start to see it.
- Were taking about the pixels on the screen, not the real dress though, the colors on screen are what you see and theyre gold and blue-white
- When I first saw the pic it was clearly blue/black. I laughed out loud when my wife asked me about the white/gold dress. I showed her my phone, and she agreed she could kinda see the blue black. She showed me hers, and I could kinda make out the white gold.
  The device you view it on matters, and the lighting around you. For a while I could switch between them with concentration.
  This pic is obviously white/gold.
When you look at the checker shadow illusion, do you see the pixels as identical in color? If not, then obviously there's more to human perception than just the color of the pixel code.
- That is witchcraft.
- Depends on whether I zoom in so the color fills the screen or not. This doesn't change the color values that appear on the screen.
Funny, I see black and blue, of course the "black" part looks like gold but I think it's because of the lighting and the actual color is dark gray
- Sounds like you see blue and gold, which is the third option <10% pick
This isn't the picture they used at the time either, why are we cropping it now?
Yeah, and then people started posting comparison shots of what both groups of people see, side by side. One dress clearly being blue/black, and the other being clearly white/gold.
I just remember thinking to myself how people can look at that and still believe in nonsense. If there really was something going on with the colors, light wavelength, etc. we'd just be looking at a side-by-side image of two identical dresses, like looking at a stereoscopic image.
I'm the exact opposite. When somebody first showed me the picture, I thought "is this some kind of trick question? It's obviously black and blue". And still to this day, after many arguments with (friends and family) as what I can only perceive as stubborn defensiveness, I can still only ever perceive it as black and blue.
I literally cannot override my color perception to trick myself into seeing white and gold and it feels like a mistake a lot of people made (to see white and gold) and then just stuck with and argued for ("it's an optical illusion!" or "look at the pixels!").
- Even if you zoom in really far? Thats what I cant wrap my head around. The colour is so far from black I cant see how anyone would interpret it as black.
- I literally cannot override my color perception to trick myself [...]
  If biology had intent, I'd think this is intentional. You're not supposed to be able to do that.
  Once your brain decides on a context, that becomes the (percieved) truth, and it'll take a lot of new information to change your mind because your brain will invent reasons why what you're seeing is correct. Your brain makes up a story, that story seems to make sense, and so new perceptions not only need to make sense but also disprove the story it has.
  Take, for instance, this silhouette. It has no lines to indicate depth, but I bet you'll settle on a mental 3D model—you'll be able to see where the hips end, which leg is doing what—and it'll be really hard to switch perception from spinning one direction to spinning the other.
How does it feel to be objectively wrong?
You never understood it because you are wrong. If you actually *color pick you will see that it is blue and black. Not only are you eyes/brain incorrect, but the original dress is actually blue and black.
- I love how people keep saying this without actually picking the colours. There’s no black pixels on there at all.
- I did that in photoshop and it confirned what my eyes saw
This dress is black and blue. I am laughing hysterically that any of you think it’s not. Is your eyesight bad in other ways? Honestly asking because mine is really good.
- I regularly colour-match clothes as part of my retouching work. My eyes are fine otherwise I wouldn't be trusted with critical color work.

C'mon, it is clearly blue and black 😁

The actual dress was in fact blue and black.
- those color illusions always wreck my brain
- The link looks blue and black but the post still looks white and gold...
  Edit: IT CHANGED TO BLACK AND BLUE WHILE I WAS LOOKING AT IT
Yes. The people who see white and gold must not register the yellow indoor light of the picture and are probably very outdoorsy people.
- Brother I'm more vampire than man and I can only see white and gold. I have no idea how to use it as black and blue
- Hm, this is interesting - I am indeed "outdoorsy" and could only see "white and gold in shadow". I think this might also be because of the highlight on the right suggesting that it's daylight all around and the dress is in deep shadow, and the blue color is also highly reminiscent of "white cloth in deep shadow". This XKCD helped me clear up the confusion and now if I squint I can see both color schemes:
  https://xkcd.com/1492/
- I've actually experienced the perceptual shift from blue and black to white and gold. The moment was fleeting, but definitely registered white and gold. And then back to blue and black, and I've never been able to replicate the shift.
- Nope.

Just asked my kids (Not around for the first time). One says blue and black/gray and the other said purple and green/gray. I've never known anyone who actually saw it as white and gold. Only heard that people do.

It's so fucking white and gold I think there's something wrong with you and your children
- Look at the background. The lighting is a warm yellow. This shifts blue to white and black to gold.
I do
It's white and gold to me
I do, too
It's white/gold if you recognize that it's lit from behind. So the dress appearing darker is due to there being much less light on it than the stuff behind it.
I can't see it as blue/black because I can't make my brain ignore the fact that it's backlit. But if your brain never recognizes that, then I suppose it would look blue.
- They established that its blue and black. I see white and gold but the actual colour was never the debate.
- Does it help that you can see the shadows of the sleeves on the body of the dress? There has to be light in front and above for that to happen.
- The actual dress is blue and black and even when heavily backlit it just appears to be a lighter shade of blue, but not even close to white.

Literally the entire planet remembers this. Even people who were not born yet.

10 YEARS AGO?!

When that was going around I saw it as black and blue, and my partner at the time saw it as white and gold. When it was revealed that it was actually the former, I made a comment something like "I guess the difference is I see things as they actually are", which got me a sharp look. :)

…shortly after, the internet broke people’s brains though addictive feed algorithms and everyone lost their minds. But then Lemmy was born to restore the internet to an early more fun time. Lemmy just hopes that one day it will have its own dress moment.

We don’t need dress. We have beans.
- Plz sned beans ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
This feels a little pretentious. Reminds me of the "Reddit may be banned because we're such high IQ free thinkers" with the "piss on the toilet seat post below it"
It also feels a bit like the porn bot comments on YouTube but that might be because I find both annoying

Ok is this post some sort of trick? I opened up lemmy, saw it white and gold for the first time in my life, then I took a shower, now it is blue and black once more.

For some reason, in the thumbnail, it's much easier to convince my brain that it's a white and gold dress in shadow. When I expand the image, it's pretty much impossible for me to see it as anything other than blue & black.

I swear it was blue and black this morning, but now it's white and gold!

Opposite happened to me, white and gold this morning but black and blue now 🤯
Same here, I know it's the same post since I up voted it.

ITT: people telling other people they're trolling rather than accepting that humans can perceive reality differently, and the own perception is never objective.

It is interesting it’s only the black and blue people who don’t seem to get it and get emotional over it.
- Probably bcos the white and gold people are strictly wrong and it's incredibly obvious to black and blue people but for some reason there's a stupid debate because some people are bad at looking at things?
Well, except, there is an objective perceivable reality. And we all see it. If you saw the dress in the correct lighting, you wouldn't have trouble discerning the color unless you had a malformed perception in the first place.
- No this is exactly incorrect. We do NOT perceive objective reality. All perception is subjective, and then goes through a further filter of interpretation. If someone says something is blue, there is no guarantee they perceive it the same as someone else. On top of societal pressure itself being able to change perception.
  This is why in every scientific endeavor we try to take humans out of its as much as possible.
"humans can perceive reality differently", yea, that's true, but the thing with the dress picture is that it's so obvious that there is a bright white light, that people doesn't see it, like, never in it's entire life have ever use a flashlight or somelight like that and see how shuch kind of light can get colors brighter. We have the sun, damnit. If the light in the picture were more blue or purple like, the dress would be more darker, BUT! if the dress were actually white and golden/yellow,with the light said before, would be getting the same result, but it's not the case.
"humans can perceive reality differently", yea, but this is not of one cases

Here's a pretty good Slate article on this dress, and how important this image became:

https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/heres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.html

When I look at the image attached to this post, I can't see anything but white and gold, as I always have. This, in spite of now knowing it's black and blue.

Yes, I do remember ten years ago.

This concludes your long term memory exam. Please see the lady at the front desk to schedule your short term exam.
- Where was the lady supposed to be again?

10 years? No way

I’ve never seen even a hint of gold in this image. It’s always been blue and black to me

I still only see white/gold even though the actual dress was black/blue

The dress is a bistable picture, similar to the Spinning Dancer, which you can consciously reverse the direction of spin with some practice.

To see the dress as blue-black, I first look at the black dress in the bottom-left corner, then shift gaze to the main dress when colour is established.

To see the dress as white-gold, I first look at the sunny regions on the right, then move gaze across, when the main dress goes to white-gold.

It may help to cover or mask the opposite region, when focusing on one side.
For detail, 10 years ago I saw this as white-gold and did not change from that perception. Did not know what all the fuss was about this dress. Today, I saw it as white-gold initially, but 10 minutes later, after two friends saw it as blue-black, I also saw it as blue-black and could not shake it.

Yeah it sas white and gold initially, then i consciously thought of it as blue and black, and now i cannot go back to white and gold even with your instructions...
It definitely seems to be a conscious focus on contrast that defines its colors
Your comment caused me to scroll back up to try to force the white and gold (love the spinning dancer) but as soon as I got there the dress was already white and gold despite the black and blue I had initially seen.
Wild.

ARE YOU FR? WHO REMEMBERES THIS? IS THIS A SARCASTIC POST??? SAY SIKE OP

Ten years? I remember clearly that I argued about this on my friends mailing list

older than 10 years, more like 12 or 13. I remember arguing about this damn dress at the ad agency I was working at in 2012.
- Yeah but 2012 is like 5 years ago, right? Right?

It's pale blue and gold, right?

I see blue and gold too, but you're the first other person I've met who does
- Rise up my brother!
IIRC, it's white and gold, but the lighting is way oversaturated or otherwise fucked up, making it look blue and black.
- it's the other way around. the dress is blue and black. people who are white and gold do so based on an assumption that it's in shadow rather than overexposed.
- I thought it was the otherway around. I see White and Gold and I'm pretty sure I was wrong at the time

it was obviously blue and yellow.

Yeah, it's like blue and an ugly desaturated goldenrod. Because it's sort of yellowish instead of black I think that's why it tricks people's brains.

color constancy was not "first investigated" just ten years ago.

Yeah, this was a known thing when I was a kid... considerably longer ago than 10 years.

This is flicking between white and gold and black and blue each time I scroll past it.

The blue of the dress is pretty obvious, the black details are a different, golden hue due to ambient light. I "know" it's black, but it looks dark gold

The blue of the dress is pretty obvious
It really isn't to me. Even knowing the true colour I still cannot see the blue in this picture, it's perfectly white for me. Guess my brain is wired wrong. ☹️
Edit: happy cake day!
- I legit saw this picture as white and gold until I went to an article that someone linked and they had a transitioning gif with the saturation / hue shifting it.
  It’s now black and blue for me and I’m gonna go cry in the shower as my understanding of everything has just changed in real time.

I see it obviously blue black, but I have some specific accessibility related colour filters on my screen that might influence this.

The photo looks different. I see the original as white and gold but this looks blue and black.
Edit: Fuck me, I'm looking at this again at night and it's back to white and gold... I guess my phone is on "night mode" now...

It's strange. I'm wearing sunglasses right now and it looks white and gold but when I take them off it looks blue and black.

I can sort of change it. Probably just my TN monitor though.

This was always the real trick. If you have a laptop you can probably tilt your screen to make it change between the two. What angle you use your screen at affects your perception.

I stuck my foot in my mouth about this dress. It was about a year later, and I didn't realize it had been proven to be black and blue, and I said something snarky when someone I liked said it was black and blue. I was so sure it was gold and white, I made an ass of myself.

everyone's wrong, gold and baby blue

This... Thank god i m not crazy
this! me too!

Oh yeah, the gold and white dress. I remember some people were acting crazy saying it is blue and white.

jokes aside the actual dress was blue and black

Black and blue. You blind.

The lighter color looks like a blue-ish white, but I can't see anything other than gold for the stripes.

It was always black and blue, but I've always found it fun to switch back and forth between which color combination it was. It was also a fun phenomena, but I don't like that it was ten years+ ago now. Time moves a bit too fast.

There was also this bro science take, which is debunked:

When you see white and gold you are happy and when you see black and blue you are depressed.

Thants so cool i finally got to see both color version and how my brain blends between them. For anyone wondering how, I am in a dark room with the phone (darkmode lemmy) and it was looking white gold to me. But when I squish my eyes to darken the incoming screen light and blocking of the right light background with my thumb I could make it fade into blue with black stripes.

Its so funny that this meme has sparked the exact debate all over again.

Article with original photo. Frankly, I see it as blue and gold this morning after I just woke up. I know that I've been able to see both of the other views (limited) when I viewed the photo when I was fully awake, but not right now.

I see it as dark brownish yellow and blue

This didn’t “reveal differences in human perception”. Those differences were well known already. What was lacking - and still is, as far as I know - is a good model of human colour perception.

I think everyone knew about how human perception subconsciously color corrects a particular image, but this was shocking in that there was genuine disagreement between people who simply couldn't see it the other way.

Ha! I saw this and thought "It's clearly white and gold, let's check out the comments" then I read a comment saying it was objectively blue and black, so I scrolled up to take another look, and now I can no longer see the white and gold no matter how hard I try.

you fools the dress is clearly grey :3

I still see both colors alternatingly.

Friggin hate that dress.

Not this shit again!

I remember.

oh god not again with this absolutely egocentric bullshit factory..... ugh i hate our society sometimes

I only see white and gold, I don't understand the blue black folks.

I currently see blue/light blue and black+gold, but no white. If I remember correctly I never saw white.

Always saw it as white/gold first but after a few seconds I perceive it as blue/black and then it stays that way.

I can't remember the pairs of colors that are supposed to be. Were blue/black and golden/white?

Congratulations, you remembered.
- its fokin cul

On my phone the background of Lemmy (not the photo) is black. And what is clearly gold in the photos doesn't look anything like black.

I know the dress is blue and black and that's what pisses me off. I can't even see blue and black if I try.

I don't get it. It's clearly white and gold. How can anyone see black and blue?
- I know right? But the manufacturer says it's blue and black. They didn't make a white and gold one.
I recall seeing pictures of the dress in other light that make it obvious, and when you compare them next to each other i can see what's going on, but yeah by default my eyes 100% see white/gold here.
I'm sitting here with my professor Mom, and her award winning teacher friend who both see gold and white while I see very clearly black and blue. I tried zooming in on specific areas to show them just the shoulder, that I see as blue. They said they still saw white. Then I went to a black area, and I'll be fucking damned if I didn't see some definite gold! The majority of it was black, but there is definitely gold in that picture if you zoom in.

Can't believe it's been 10 years. I'm getting old, and I'm not even 40.

I can see the blue and black clearly when i tilt the phone screen away from my face... I always see white and gold first, even though I know it isn't.

thanks for making me feel old ...

Everythings black

It’s white and gold until you do the ice-bucket challenge, then it’s blue and black.

This is why "eye witness testimony" can never be trusted. People with fucked up physiology just tumbling through life and not even realizing that their color wheel is off by magnitudes, and that cilantro is delicious.

haha gottem

The "color" of a thing is pure perception and often just a genuine personal choice.

It is annoying to think about it like that, but consider:

A movie projected onto a white canvas. Before the movie starts, there is no light projecting onto it and it's just the white canvas.

The movie opening credit comes on. "ALIEN" it says in thin white letters on black background. The projector does not darken the canvas, just add some lines of light forming letters in the middle. Yet we see black.

Is the canvas black or white now? If do when did it change? Is it both? How would you describe that?

People give many answers to this. Most of them based on choice of definition more than objective observation, which I find super interesting.

I could understand gold, but where the hell do you see white on this picture?

White clothes under shade looks blueish

Wait

Until now I always saw this dress as blue and black

Can this change ????

I love the way everyone was saying it was white and gold.

Until the science came out.

And everyone claimed to have always seen blue and black.

Fun fact: I can see both.
Some times when I look at it it’s blue and black. Some times when I look at it it’s white and gold. I can make them flip back and forth.
Altering perception is cool.
What science lol.
The pixels are light blue and gold.
The dress itself is dark blue and black.
But the pixels side with the white and gold team. They are seeing the pixels as they appear. If you see blue and black your subconscious is over-riding the objective reality of the pixels (and guessing correctly what colours the original dress is).
- Imagine falling for the most obvious bait possible.
Is that the question though? Sure the dress is blue/black but the photo itself is light ass blue (white) and gold.
I dont care about science or the true color. The question is the photo. Included all the color changes and whatever. Call it light blue and gold thats fine but no black.
Take the filter off, yes it's the actual color but thats not the question.

Even more probable than perception variations is just messed up screen settings

No, two people can be looking at the same screen and perceive it differently.
- Yes I know, I'm not denying that

it’s clearly blue and black. and i will force-feed anyone who thinks otherwise seventeen of those turkey legs that your aunt carole would always make for the thanksgiving family potluck when you were a kid and they were always dry as a desert but you never had the heart to tell her that her beloved turkey legs are borderline inedible and are honestly a disgrace to not only the art of cooking but to humanity as a whole.

No, what happened is that a bunch of people were shown to be objectively wrong about what color it was, and couldn't let it go.

That's a boring description because there's no curiosity why they were wrong

Were people just stupid or something and not capable of knowing when the ambient light and camera is affecting the colour of the image?

WTF is this about people getting exact pixel colours?! The question is what colour is the dress, not the colour of the picture in which the dress is depicted!

Using pixel colour to determine the colour of a dress is like saying Martin Luther King had grey skin because the photo he's depicted in is in black and white!

People were distributing edited versions of the dress image just to fuck with people. I'm convinced that trolling was the root of the entire "debate".
Nah, it's actually possible to see each version. There are actually three: white and gold, blue and black, blue and brown. It's like those "magic eye puzzles". It just kinda pops into place when it happens. Depending on the lighting in your room and what colors your eyes have recently been looking at, your eyes will see it differently. It has partly to do with how what you "see" is a hodgepodge of signals all being processed into one "image" and the way we process color.
You are correct tho, objectively the image is a specific RGB value and has a defined "color". That whole divergence between what it is and what it appears to be is the very subject of all those research papers.
I believe one of the ways to easily defeat this trick is to put the dress on a person. The skin tone will act as a known reference point for the rest.
Part of the reason it can be hard to tell is because we cannot see a source of the ambient light shining onto the part of the dress we see. The reason I see white and gold is because my brain defaults to the back lighting being sunlight and the overhead being shaded by tent. Not uncommon at rennaissance fairs and the like. But if you see this all as in door lighting it's much easier to imagine bright overhead department store lights or something.
So no, no one is stupid for seeing it one way or the other.
So what color was his skin?
- Brown?

Sorry but it's white and gold. The white only gets a blue hue due to the ambient lighting.

And it never is black!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
Sorry :(
I can't see it as anything but white and gold. However, other photos clearly show it is black and blue.
Interestingly, if I'm scrolling past, my brain will sometimes perceive it as black and blue for a fraction of a second. I can normally flip optical illusions at will. This one jams me in the wrong viewing mode.

So fucking stupid. It's black and blue in over exposure. If your brain isn't autocorrecting it... go to a doctor or something.

If this "viral dress debate" has taught me anything is that you can claim whatever bullshit online and bunch of people will believe it. Post an orange and claim it's blue even though it's clearly orange and there will be a percentage of idiots who will believe that the orange is blue because someone said so. And we'll have virale debate about a fucking orange.

Of course there are vision conditions like daltonism and we have variances in perceptions of color gradients, but white and gold doesn't suddenly become blue and black...

white and gold doesn't suddenly become blue and black...
This dress is blue and black 🙄
- The whole argument around it is not how we perceive it but how camera perceived it in a flawed lighting condition.
  That's like taking a shitty 2 Mpix photo with a potato from 2003 and truncate it to 8 bits and then claim broccoli is fucking blue because the camera had no fucking concept of a tone mapping or color temperature and captured it as blue.
  Also if you put color picker on it it'll be in the white spectrum and barely register a mild hint of blue. And if the dress was blue, then you're one shitty ass photographer and has nothing to do with our actual eyes. You can make a blue dress look almost white. Anyone who ever had aquarium with beautiful metallic blue fish and used wrong lighting and turned them into bland beige silver color will know what I'm talking about.
I'm curious which color you perceive?
- You mean which color camera perceived when the photo was taken?
Confidently incorrect perfection.