I don’t think they can be. Like I said, a roomful of nine-year-olds, and my six-year-old daughter, all said without prompting that the dress was blue and black. (Some of the third-graders said gold, but none said white). Color isn’t a raw perception, it’s processed mentally. When I looked at the dress picture originally, I instantly went to blue and black and took awhile before I noticed that what I’d seen as black was technically brownish in the picture, and even then I was like, “well, yeah, taht’s what it looks like when light’s reflected off shiny black stuff.”
I disagree that the actual colors in the photo are light blue and gold. It’s not even dark gold or mustard. The blue part is more of a blue gray color, while the black parts range from medium bronze to deep bronze.
When I look at the picture, I see a washed-out blue and black dress. It looks like the black material in the top right is reflecting light. Any picture of a black object will be lighter where light is reflecting off it.
I buy the explanation about our brains compensating for what it perceives was ambient lighting. An example of top down processing effects … once we have enough bits that match a higher level pattern our brain will impose that pattern on what is actually there. As has been noted earlier in this thread that is how we deal we seeing what is in fact actually there in the real world most commonly despite what often is a pretty piss poor signal to noise ratio.
I have read nothing so far though that explains why it flips for some and for some once flipped cannot flip back and for others can. (I was a first look indigo and black and next time shaded white and gold and have not been able to flip back.)
Wrong.
Not wholly. A lot of people see all of them as blue and black, including myself now.
I was much like you at first, though. So convinced it was white and gold and thinking it was a monitor issue. : p
It’s really an illusion issue.
I’m curious about this, too (I’m a non-flipper). I have had the experience of flipping between seeing the Rabbit and the Duck:
http://www.henrycountyvirginia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/duck-or-rabbit.gif
…and the Old Woman and the Young Woman:
But when it comes to colors, I seem to see the pixels–with no flipping. (I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, and that may have something to do with it.)(The dress in the photo looks periwinkle and gold-bronze to me, and did from the beginning.)
At this point you’d think that some additional photos of fabrics we know to be black, but that look brownish-bronzish-gold in the pic, would have been posted. Where are the photographs of judges’ robes and of men in white tie and of old-fashioned nuns’ habits???
The closest thing I’ve seen is this page, linked to by Lord_Feldon in post #80 of this thread:
http://brianking.org/post/112201321259
That page’s iPhone photos of royal and black t-shirt material, made at differing light levels, are the most convincing I’ve seen of how black can look gold.
Yet surely there are more photos out there. We need to heal the nation (the world?) and stop assuming that the people who say they see something we don’t are liars, trolls, or worse.
Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear here. Firstly, I didn’t say “white and gold”, I said blue and gold. Secondly, I only said I was “reporting what my eyes were telling me”, not that I was convinced of anything. The only person who put anything monitor-related into my head was you. And I’ve yet to understand the illusion-element of it, as it still remains blue and gold to me, unchanged since I first viewed it. Does that mean I’m still falling for the illusion? 
Over the past day since my last post, the dress has briefly appeared gold and white for a brief moment when I first look at it on certain brightnesses. Then it flips to blue and black instantly and is pretty dramatic. Then I can’t get it to go back to gold and white again voluntarily.
It still amazes me that a few days ago, for a few hours, I couldn’t for the life of me see a blue and black dress no matter how hard I tried, and now it’s clear as day.
Agreed.
So, what happened was, someone wore a black and royal blue dress to a wedding. When someone took a picture of it, the picture did not look like the picture of a blue and black dress. It couldn’t have because otherwise it would have been an unremarkable picture that looked like the original dress, and therefore would not have been posted asking about its color.
If the question is, what color could the original dress have been given that a picture of it looks like this, then yes, I can see that the original picture was changed enough (like the picture of the T-shirts) to look like it is white and gold but was really blue and black. But if you ask, assuming that the picture is a fair representation of the original dress, what color was the original dress, the picture represents a white and gold dress.
It’s always appeared blue and black to me, although the black is thin and see-through, so that part actually looks gray/gold in places. But it’s not gold, it’s black lacy stuff. I can’t see real gold, just thin black. If it were thin gold see-through material, it would look different.
I can’t see white at all, except in photos where the colors are manipulated to wash out the blue. I can understand how something could appear white under the right light, but I can’t see it in the original photo.
What’s going on is a high processing level reorientation. Similar to the perception flips but at higher cortical categorization level. The sense it is coming is the “this doesn’t smell right” and such. I think how we react to it depends on the emotional valence of the flipping categories. Something usually pleasant to something with unpleasant sensations may trigger recoil, but otoh many times we laugh out loud and it is in fact the structure behind much humor.
I’m just not getting this. Where is this “black” idea coming from? Nothing on that page looks black except the letters. In the three side-by-side panels, even the darkest pixel in the lower right looks like a gold/brown.
I understand that in real life, it’s black and blue. I get that. I also get that some people say it’s white-with-blue-tint, and other say it’s pale blue.
What I don’t get is how anyone can look at the photo and see a black. In no photo, in no photoshop, in no RGB value, is there anything close to black on the whole Internet in regard to this dress.
No cropping, no white balancing, no color swatching has produced a black pixel. So what gives?
Not my experience. I now see the dress dark blue and black, exactly like on the “real colour” pictures of it, not washed out at all.
However, I had the same experience in reverse. When, at first, I was in the opposite camp, I was seeing it light blue and bronze, rather than white and gold. So, it seems there’s a gradation : some people correct a lot seeing it either white and gold or blue and black, others correct less and see less striking colours.
Sorry to keep the useless harping up on this dress color, but I absolutely see NO BLUE and NO BLACK in the original version of this photo.
To me, it is white and gold/bronze. I interpret the background as sunlight and the dress seems to be on a mannequin away from the sun in shadow, so maybe that’s why some see the white as blue or periwinkle.
As far as black goes in this picture, I have no clue where anyone would get that idea. Dark souls, perhaps?? :dubious:
Either way, I don’t care what color it really is. It’s hideous!! My condolences to any woman who has to wear it.
Okay, so you are not seeing THIS colors in the picture. You are seeing different colors?
Right you are not getting this. The differing perceptions are as dramatic and as sudden as rabbit to duck, or clockwise to counterclockwise spinning dancer. Obviously the duck rabbit drawing is in actuality neither a rabbit or a duck but an arbitrary collection of lines that our brains perceive as representative of one or the other at a time. “Where is this this ‘rabbit’ idea coming from?”
This isn’t true, actually, as evidenced by the elements of the picture other than the dress. They show that the appropriate correction to make is to remove the yellow, rather than removing the blue. (If you remove the blue, the background goes all wrong. If you remove the yellow, the background makes sense.)
That fact about color correction would seem to indicate the picture is in fact best interpreted as depicting a blue and black dress. The majority’s unconscious processing (including me) is just not doing it right.
When I look at the picture, my brain immediately and unconsciously adjusts for a washed-out shot - just as others account for shadow. It’s not that I’m seeing a pale blue and brown and going “OK, there’s bright sunlight over there, so that means . . .” etc, etc - it’s just an instant, uncontrollable alteration. I see royal blue and total black.
The difference between the gold/white and black/blue people is how their brains compensate for the lighting in the picture - whether they see bright light washing it out, or a shadow covering the dress. What I don’t understand is how a shadow would exist with such bright light all around, and a bright, black and white dress to the lower left corner.
An odd question for the “blue and gold” people: do you mishear song lyrics more often than most people? I wonder if there might be a similar process at work in both cases (amateur neuroscientist time…): your brain says “that’s what I perceive, so I guess that’s that,” rather than “hold on, that can’t possibly be right!”.
For the record, I’m still unable to see the dress as anything other than blue and gold.
People who see the white and gold don’t see it as blue and black and vice versa. It’s not like it’s a trick question. I held my phone up to my husband when i first saw it, CONFIDENT he would say white and gold. He said just as confidently “blue and black.” Same photo, same phone screen, looking st it together at the same time.
When this exploded in reddit, most of the “what are both sides talking about? It doesn’t change at all!” camp claimed to be graphic designers or being familiar with photography and so on.
I guess that in real life my brain does the adjustment pretty much the same as everybody else, as in I can see a shirt as always keeping the same color in the shade and in bright light, but since I use a lot of photoshop, it can tell that a picture is just a collection of pixels and my brain doesn’t need to compensate.
It’s a theory, at least.