this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Mildly Interesting

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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 90 points 1 month ago (39 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 78 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 26 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 9 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 7 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 9 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 24 points 1 month ago (6 children)

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

[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 13 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 10 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.

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 39 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 10 points 1 month ago

Paint is compromised, they are in on it!

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[–] stream_bone@piefed.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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

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[–] teslasaur@lemmy.world 24 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 25 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 14 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 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

Sorry, I'm team gold. We're real! I've never seen blue in the original image.

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[–] fonix232@fedia.io 17 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 7 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.

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[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 15 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 7 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 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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

[–] KillerWhale@orcas.enjoying.yachts 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Please explain how the world actually looks

[–] Sasquatch@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago

I don't think there's an objective answer to that

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[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 month ago

Oh come on, not this again

[–] espurr@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] topherclay@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

This kills the crab.

[–] ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 9 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.

[–] petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 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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[–] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

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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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[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 8 points 1 month ago

This pic makes my brain go "AHHHHHHHHHHHHh"

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

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

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

This actually helped me.

[–] ApertureUA@lemmy.today 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or maybe remove the blue and yellow pieces of glass in front of them?

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[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 5 points 1 month ago

Whitebalance comes to mind. Human eyes perceive the long rectangles' tint as a base color, i.e. effectively neutral/white.

So yeah, a blue dress in a yellowish light might look the same as a yellow dress in a bluish light.

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