So there's this stupid shit going around the internet, where people have varying opinions on whether this dress is either white and gold, or blue and black.
It's making quite a stir on Twitter and everywhere else people spout opinions on the internet.
First of all, to me it actually appears neither white and gold nor blue and black, but rather light blue and brown.
And it turns out I'm right: the image itself is light blue and gold-brown.
The dress, in reality, however, is actually blue and black.
If you use the eyedropper tool in an image editing program, the image of the dress is very clearly shades of unsaturated light blue and some browns that have hints of yellow in them.
We know the dress is blue and black in reality because it's from Roman Originals.
However this doesn't explain everything.
People's perceptions largely come from different interpretations of the illuminant(s) in the scene. If your brain is interpreting it with a single bright illuminant (ostensibly a camera flash) coming from the point of the viewer, your mind will correct the image of the dress itself to be blue and black. This is a result of accounting for the bright light source (this is clearly what happened in reality). Alternatively you can view it being colored by a soft blue illuminant, or see it as being under a bluish shadow, and your mind will correct the color of the dress itself to white and gold. It's just a question of whether you are attributing the blue to the light or the dress itself.
This image shows (compared to the original in the middle) what you might perceive if you balance the image to the light areas (consistent with seeing the blueness come from a light) versus balance it to the dark areas (consistent with attributing the blueness to the dress)
tl;dr the image is actually light blue and brown, the dress is actually blue and black, perception varies based on how your mind is constructing the scene's lighting
It's making quite a stir on Twitter and everywhere else people spout opinions on the internet.
First of all, to me it actually appears neither white and gold nor blue and black, but rather light blue and brown.
And it turns out I'm right: the image itself is light blue and gold-brown.
The dress, in reality, however, is actually blue and black.
If you use the eyedropper tool in an image editing program, the image of the dress is very clearly shades of unsaturated light blue and some browns that have hints of yellow in them.
We know the dress is blue and black in reality because it's from Roman Originals.
However this doesn't explain everything.
People's perceptions largely come from different interpretations of the illuminant(s) in the scene. If your brain is interpreting it with a single bright illuminant (ostensibly a camera flash) coming from the point of the viewer, your mind will correct the image of the dress itself to be blue and black. This is a result of accounting for the bright light source (this is clearly what happened in reality). Alternatively you can view it being colored by a soft blue illuminant, or see it as being under a bluish shadow, and your mind will correct the color of the dress itself to white and gold. It's just a question of whether you are attributing the blue to the light or the dress itself.
This image shows (compared to the original in the middle) what you might perceive if you balance the image to the light areas (consistent with seeing the blueness come from a light) versus balance it to the dark areas (consistent with attributing the blueness to the dress)
tl;dr the image is actually light blue and brown, the dress is actually blue and black, perception varies based on how your mind is constructing the scene's lighting
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