Who remembers this?
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The claim mixes up how perception works and what people actually mean when they talk about top-down processing. White and gold viewers aren’t saying the pixels are literally white and gold—they’re saying the colors they perceive match most closely with that label, especially when those were the only options given. Many of them describe seeing pale blue and brown, which are the actual pixel values. That’s not bottom-up processing in the strict sense, because even that perception is shaped by how the brain interprets the image based on assumed lighting. You don’t just see wavelengths—you see surfaces under conditions your brain is constantly estimating. The dress image is ambiguous, so different people lock into different lighting models early in the process, and that influences what the colors look like. The snake example doesn’t hold up either. If the lighting changes and your perception doesn’t adjust, that’s when you’re more likely to get the snake’s color wrong. Contextual correction helps you survive, it doesn’t kill you. As for the brain scan data, higher activity in certain areas means more cognitive involvement, not necessarily error. There’s no evidence those areas were just shutting things down. The image is unstable, people resolve it differently, and that difference shows up in brain activity.
White and gold viewers aren’t saying the pixels are literally white and gold—they’re saying the colors they perceive match most closely with that label
I think all of the white-gold people are really condescending, explaining how their perception is correct and how blue-black people don't understand the image. Also, if they explain how the image looks white-gold enough, that the blue-black people will be wrong.
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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
Show me the white here. I thought gold was like a yellow orange, not a brown-grey color
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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!
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White and gold viewers aren’t saying the pixels are literally white and gold—they’re saying the colors they perceive match most closely with that label
I think all of the white-gold people are really condescending, explaining how their perception is correct and how blue-black people don't understand the image. Also, if they explain how the image looks white-gold enough, that the blue-black people will be wrong.
explaining how their perception is correct and how blue-black people don't understand the image.
Well the ones that do understand the image by definition won't need it explained. There's no 'correct', if we're talking pixels/digital representation, it's white-gold (or light-blue and brown if we're being pedantic), if we're talking about what the physical dress is, it's blue and black.
If it were a white and gold dress and the light was reversed to shadow it'd likely be the other way about; some people would interpret it as the pixels displayed (blue and black), and others would subconsciously revert it to white and gold.
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I still see both colors alternatingly.
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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!
So what color was his skin?
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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".
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]You selected the brightest highlights on the dress. I selected more average colors here.
I also included WHITE AND GOLD next to the selected colors, so you can see what they actually look like. Are you really saying that blue is white and brown-grey is gold?
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I only see white gold
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explaining how their perception is correct and how blue-black people don't understand the image.
Well the ones that do understand the image by definition won't need it explained. There's no 'correct', if we're talking pixels/digital representation, it's white-gold (or light-blue and brown if we're being pedantic), if we're talking about what the physical dress is, it's blue and black.
If it were a white and gold dress and the light was reversed to shadow it'd likely be the other way about; some people would interpret it as the pixels displayed (blue and black), and others would subconsciously revert it to white and gold.
wrote last edited by [email protected]You're saying it's actually white-gold?
Do you think the color on the left is actually white? White is on the right here, for your reference:
In the colors below, you think they are the same color? Brown is not the same color as gold
If you were tasked with painting something gold, would you paint it brown instead?
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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
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I swear it was blue and black this morning, but now it's white and gold!
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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'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.
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You're saying it's actually white-gold?
Do you think the color on the left is actually white? White is on the right here, for your reference:In the colors below, you think they are the same color? Brown is not the same color as gold
If you were tasked with painting something gold, would you paint it brown instead?
No it’s a very light blue that looks like white+shadow.
The gold is a browny gold but the options were ‘white and gold’ or ‘blue and black’
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/1af486db-deb1-44da-8d48-6ad5b5833713.webp
I see these exact pixels for the whole dress. So no black, and no blue like the original physical dress.
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You selected the brightest highlights on the dress. I selected more average colors here.
I also included WHITE AND GOLD next to the selected colors, so you can see what they actually look like. Are you really saying that blue is white and brown-grey is gold?Well you would select the brightest bit to get an idea of the bit that was least impacted by the shadow.
But yes still closer to white and gold than (dark) blue and black
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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!
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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Yes, I do remember ten years ago.
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No it’s a very light blue that looks like white+shadow.
The gold is a browny gold but the options were ‘white and gold’ or ‘blue and black’
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/1af486db-deb1-44da-8d48-6ad5b5833713.webp
I see these exact pixels for the whole dress. So no black, and no blue like the original physical dress.
wrote last edited by [email protected]And no white.
The only issue with the photo is that the black isn't captured as absolute black and it's a brown color. -
The claim mixes up how perception works and what people actually mean when they talk about top-down processing. White and gold viewers aren’t saying the pixels are literally white and gold—they’re saying the colors they perceive match most closely with that label, especially when those were the only options given. Many of them describe seeing pale blue and brown, which are the actual pixel values. That’s not bottom-up processing in the strict sense, because even that perception is shaped by how the brain interprets the image based on assumed lighting. You don’t just see wavelengths—you see surfaces under conditions your brain is constantly estimating. The dress image is ambiguous, so different people lock into different lighting models early in the process, and that influences what the colors look like. The snake example doesn’t hold up either. If the lighting changes and your perception doesn’t adjust, that’s when you’re more likely to get the snake’s color wrong. Contextual correction helps you survive, it doesn’t kill you. As for the brain scan data, higher activity in certain areas means more cognitive involvement, not necessarily error. There’s no evidence those areas were just shutting things down. The image is unstable, people resolve it differently, and that difference shows up in brain activity.
So you're saying if there were a blue and black snake that bites with deadly venom, and a white and gold snake that's harmless to people, you'd gain an evolutionary advantage from seeing the blue and black snake turn white and gold in the sun?
No, being able to see the same snake as the same colour by adjusting for ambient lighting conditions aids survival.
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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.
No see, with that, I can switch back and forth. It's trippy, but I can. Which is why the dress thing is so weird: I've tried many times (over the last....shudders decade).
That's why I find the dress kind of an outlier and actual doubt. It just doesn't add up to me because I can't seem to switch to white-gold.
But then, also, going off the different people here, I also find it hard to believe there would be what looks like 40-45% of people who still are the exact opposite, in only being able to see white-gold, rather than blue black.
Like I get how technically, "the pixels...", but that doesn't explain to me how there's like a near-50% of people (at least the English-speaking internet demographic) that are... To put it bluntly, seemingly deficient. It would be one thing if there was no definitive proof of what color the dress actually is, or if it was just "some people see it start out one way and other people see it the other way, but then both people could switch between", but it's evidently NOT that - it's that some people are just stuck unable to interpret the color in a shitty picture correctly, and that other people are unable to interpret it wrongly (and maybe a smaller chunk of people who are able to go back and forth, but then that presents even more discussions).
There's a lot going on here, both psycho-optically, psychologically, and socially, and I don't think internet forums/social media that can't isolate, drill down, and then research the different sections of the blue-black/white-gold dress phenomenon should be bringing it up (though good luck with that) and basically just flaming and trolling each other in such a.... Cognitively shallow way.
It's worth examining, absolutely. But absolutely not in this format.
