this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
352 points (91.1% liked)
Mildly Interesting
26696 readers
778 users here now
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, don't worry, you're supposed to be able to see they're different.
The majority of the image being grey is gives your brain the right context required to perceive each half is being tinted, so the perceived white balance isn't shifted around like in the original "the dress" meme.
This is more of a teardown of the "original" illusion than a demonstration.
Looking at the bridge, it becomes clear that even though you can see in the wider context that the dresses are separate colours - when compared directly under skewed/tinted white balance they become indistinguishable.
Meaning that in the original "the dress" meme, how you perceived the dress' colour depended greatly on how you perceived the tint/white balance in the surrounding areas of the photo (or how it was displayed on your device).
Adding a bit more context, the bridge doesn't just show they are indistinguishable, it shows they are the exact same color.
If you put a color picker on each dress, you'll get the exact same RGB value.
I've seen the dress on multiple different types of screens and it has literally always looked blue and black.
Yeah i am with you. I never understood how anyone saw gold.
So, when you say that you never understood how anyone saw gold are you
a) Seeing an extremely washed out image and compensating
or
b) You are literally seeing a solid black and a navy blue i.e. there's basically an insignificant amount of difference to your eye between the black part of the dress and #000000
If it's the former that might explain some of the difference in opinion, if it's the latter then I have no idea how I would manage to interpret it as black.
Sorry, I'm team gold. We're real! I've never seen blue in the original image.
I could get my brain to see it differently by adjusting my phone's brightness and viewing angle, but it wasn't as voluntary as other illusions (like the Ben10 figure one)
I even messed with my phone's blue light level and still no change.
I have a hypothesis that the dress just shows that lots more people have some weird issues with color. Not necessarily outright color blindness but moreso just general processing issues. But what do I know I'm just some asshole with photosensitivity.
The first couple times I saw the dress I saw it as white/gold. But after learning it was black/blue I stared at it and the colors seemed to shift in my brain. Now I can't see the white/gold for the life of me.