this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Mildly Interesting

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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 68 points 1 month ago (32 children)

Goddam! Thank you!
That kind of explains the gold or black dress!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

I can for the life of me only see it as white and gold, and I have really struggled trying to understand how others can see it as blue and black? I bet the picture you show here is a result of the research the picture of the dress initiated. It can't be a coincidence that the illusion you posted also is made with dresses.

[–] NessD@lemmy.world 56 points 1 month ago (6 children)

It's such a strange thing. For most of the illusions I can trick my brain to perceive both variants. This one is clearly black and blue. I can see that the black parts isolated can appear golden in the light, but for the life of me I can't see it any other than blue. Brains are weird.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I wonder how much of this depended on the differences in device screens. In 2015 there was a lot more variability in display technology, lower resolutions in general and worse color fidelity. OLED was uncommon and expensive, you probably only had an IPS display if you worked in graphic arts, and a lot of people were still using standard LCD monitors backlit with fluorescent tubes, which meant that the black depth was limited and the detail in dark regions of an image was frequently not visible on the screen.

[–] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

I remember showing a woman at work it, from my phone. She saw it as the opposite to me and another coworker. Me and the other coworker were stunned.

[–] JGrffn@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Just looked up the origonal dress pic on my pixel 8 pro. Its still white and gold to me. I've only ever seen it as black and blue (without aid) a handful of times since the day it went viral. In sure screens could influence this, but this damn thing stands as a powerful illusion on its own.

[–] kubica@fedia.io 6 points 1 month ago

In the drawing, the surrounding background and the hard black lines on the lighter version are probably causing that we don't compensate the light in the same way in both drawings. We are not given the same picture like it happened with the original photo.

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[–] Viceversa@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The dress was revealed to be, in fact, blue and black.

[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 month ago

On 28 February 2015, Roman Originals announced that they would make a single white and gold dress for a Comic Relief charity auction.[31]

Oh man, MAJOR missed opportunity there! They sold out of the blue and black ones like overnight, they should have fast-tracked a white and gold version production to hit the shelves ASAP and enjoyed the flood of purchases.

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[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

It was only after following elaborate instructions: change the brightness, squint, and cover up this section of the image, that I was finally able to see a white dress.

As stupid as it was, it was a pretty cool accidental worldwide psych experiment.

[–] whosepoopisonmybuttocks@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Correct interpretation: blue and black in an overexposed image

Misinterpretation: yellow and gold in an underexposed image.

The area of the picture that isn't the dress is washed out in white and the overexposure is even bleeding over top right corner.

Anyone misinterpreting must either be bad with visual context or not understand photography.

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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)
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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 35 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I had to copy the image in Paint and select the colors to believe they were the same. Goddamned witchcraft, I say!

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Paint is compromised, they are in on it!

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[–] stream_bone@piefed.blahaj.zone 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Historians are gonna really wonder why so many people talked about this

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[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] teslasaur@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

I don't get it. Are they suppose to look similar with the filters applied? I see both dresses underneath the filter, very clearly. On the left is the same black and blue dress with a yellow filter effect, on the right is a yellow and white dress with a very clear blue filter on top.

[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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).

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I've seen the dress on multiple different types of screens and it has literally always looked blue and black.

[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yeah i am with you. I never understood how anyone saw gold.

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[–] fonix232@fedia.io 13 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The point is that a black-and-blue dress, when brightly lit, will look eerily similar to a white-and-gold dress, when it's in shade.

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[–] Azzu@leminal.space 6 points 1 month ago

Yes, but the black and blue is actually exactly the same color as the yellow and white. They're both the same color but one looks black/blue while the other looks white/yellow.

[–] bequirtle@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You got it backwards, the point is they look different but are actually the same colors

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't even understand the point of this. I see a black dress with a blue apron and a yellow dress with a white apron. Is that wrong?

[–] nuko147@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Turn your phone horizontal (with locked orientation), now put one finger from your left hand and one finger from your right hand to the areas above outside the boxes.

Voilà! The boxed areas are the same.

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[–] ammonium@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (8 children)

The blue and the yellow are the same color (cover up the rest of the picture, there is no gradient in the bar). Same thing for the white and the blue, isn't that strange?

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Human vision is an illusion. It’s mostly inferred, and not representative of how you think the world looks, and I think that’s pretty cool and profound.

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[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 month ago

Oh come on, not this again

[–] espurr@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] topherclay@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

This kills the crab.

[–] urheber@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Well yeah, obviously... What's this trying to illude?

[–] Azzu@leminal.space 5 points 1 month ago

You can not imagine that for some people it could be new that the exact same color looks completely different?

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 6 points 1 month ago

This pic makes my brain go "AHHHHHHHHHHHHh"

[–] ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago (9 children)

I have no idea what must be wrong with someone's eyes to call that dress white and gold. I mean it was always a stretch, the shadow/lens on top of it would have to be fucking BLUE to color it something similar.

Even then it sounds stupid to go with that stretch of it being white and gold.

My working theory is that people who saw it gold and white were exposed to lead.

[–] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I feel like this post illustrates pretty cleanly how someone would see that

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[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Shadows do generally overrepresent the color blue due to rayleigh scattering.

Brains are also very quick to make assumptions and also very rigid about keeping them. The spinning dancer illusion, even when you already know you can and have seen it spinning both ways, it can be difficult to switch percepts.

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[–] pigup@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I was exposed to lead and yet I only saw blue and black.

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[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

This actually helped me.

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