What Color is the darn dress?!

Started by
81 comments, last by L. Spiro 9 years, 1 month ago

What Color is the darn dress???! I am loosing my mind here!

fullphoto.jpg

It is totally White and Gold!

They call me the Tutorial Doctor.

Advertisement
It was a sound stage on Mars.

My understanding is that it's a lighting thing.

http://xkcd.com/1492/

I guess when you take a picture of the dress in one lighting setup appears one colour. That picture is posted on social media and the colour question is asked generating responses saying that it's obvious. You then provide another picture in different lighting, possibly replacing the original, and then you get a bunch more other people replying about what they obviously see. In the end what you end up with is a trending internet thing which will likely help sell a lot of dresses. Pretty effective marketing campaign I suppose given that it's now penetrated its way into a game developer website.

It's black and blue. The owner of the dress confirmed this.

I totally saw white and gold at first, though. Now I can't see it as anything other than black and blue.

It's certainly a bad picture. Someone need a new camera D: But a lot of people need a monitor calibration d:

"Recursion is the first step towards madness." - "Skegg?ld, Skálm?ld, Skildir ro Klofnir!"
Direct3D 12 quick reference: https://github.com/alessiot89/D3D12QuickRef/
In reality, blue and black.

Perceptively, blue and black or white and gold depending on how your brain adjusts for percieved lighting conditions.

Objectively (i.e. the colors actually shown in the photo), light blue and golden brown.

This is intriguing though. Regardless of how many videos I have seen, and scientific explanations I still am still not seeing the acclaimed royal blue and pitch black in that photo. Like you said Anthony, light blue (if not even from tint from the sky or reflected light) and a golden brown.

I took the same photo and under-exposed it and it was closer to blue an black. Then over-exposed it and it was certainly white and golden. I feel like kseh. She saw the opportunity and made two dresses.

The reason I am intrigued though is because it sounds like a cool game. "Constancy"

p.s. Cool human experiment too.

They call me the Tutorial Doctor.

Where is the White supposed to be? At least with my Screen (and eyes) its only blue/purpleish.

I have 5 different devices (Macbook, iPad mini, iPod touch, Galaxy S4, iPad 2) I have looked at all the reports too. The keyword "Color Constancy" comes up. I am still getting white and golden/brown.

Looking at the background the exposure is sorta bad, but not too blown out. I knew right away it was an interpretation thing, but even those who claim to see blue see a very light tinted blue (not the dark royal blue), which I attributed to reflected blue light, and others attribute to overexposed blue light. In both cases it is attributed to poor lighting.

But some see both. One moment its white and gold, and the next it is black and blue.

Wondering how the overexposed black would even give golden/brown in any case. Perhaps there is a lot of brown pigment in the black dress?

They call me the Tutorial Doctor.

According to Photoshop, it's brown and blue.

On light colored areas ...

the brown is 127 113 74 ( #7F714A )

the blue is 135 151 187 ( #8797BB )

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement