If anything, I’m more interested in how THAT color is being interpreted than the dress itself. Does it become shade to people because they perceive it relative to the dress? Because, I mean, we know that it is factually light. So how are people perceiving it to be the absence of light? Can you explain that bit?
The brain doesn’t just read raw brightness; it interprets that brightness in relation to what it thinks is going on in the scene.
So when someone sees the dress as white and gold, they’re usually assuming the scene is lit by cool, natural light — like sunlight or shade. That makes the brain treat the lighter areas as a white-ish or light blue material under shadow. The darker areas (what you see as black) become gold or brown, because the brain thinks it’s seeing lighter fabric catching less light.
You, on the other hand, are likely interpreting the lighting as warm and direct — maybe indoor, overexposed lighting. So your brain treats the pale pixels not as light-colored fabric, but as light reflecting off a darker blue surface. The same with the black: it’s being “lightened” by the glare which changes the pixel representation to gold, but you interpret it as black under strong light, not gold.
Hey, just arguing with you in a different comment chain now. So, like, I see the optical illusion. But the background is clearly yellow in the picture? So I don’t understand how your brain is interpreting that part? To me it seems like you’re ignoring the background of the image for this point. Can you go more in depth on that part, specifically? Does that yellow light look blue to you?
Because shade works in 3D and it’s not clear how far away the background is from this picture. But yes, ‘dress shaped and size amounts of shade’ exist; trees, could be on a shaded balcony, etc.
Maybe I’m just an elevated being but I can clearly tell that the righthand side is a mirror on a wall and that the tan below it is where the floor meets the wall. Because of that, I can roughly make out the angle and know that we should be seeing some shade on the side if any existed in the first place.
No because it’s your subconscious, otherwise you’d have no problem understanding why it’s was ambigious. (Same applies for elevated beings - they can grasp differences in human colour perception).
And either way, even if your assumptions were true you still don’t know the angle of the sun, potential coverings, etc. You can’t predict the shade without that info so the logical choice would be to use the colours the pixels display.
The potential coverings would have to be exactly the shape of the dress because of the sleeves, no? We would see the shade passing underneath? Like onto the obvious clothing rack underneath the left sleeve?
Optical illusion innit
If anything, I’m more interested in how THAT color is being interpreted than the dress itself. Does it become shade to people because they perceive it relative to the dress? Because, I mean, we know that it is factually light. So how are people perceiving it to be the absence of light? Can you explain that bit?
The brain doesn’t just read raw brightness; it interprets that brightness in relation to what it thinks is going on in the scene.
So when someone sees the dress as white and gold, they’re usually assuming the scene is lit by cool, natural light — like sunlight or shade. That makes the brain treat the lighter areas as a white-ish or light blue material under shadow. The darker areas (what you see as black) become gold or brown, because the brain thinks it’s seeing lighter fabric catching less light.
You, on the other hand, are likely interpreting the lighting as warm and direct — maybe indoor, overexposed lighting. So your brain treats the pale pixels not as light-colored fabric, but as light reflecting off a darker blue surface. The same with the black: it’s being “lightened” by the glare which changes the pixel representation to gold, but you interpret it as black under strong light, not gold.
Hey, just arguing with you in a different comment chain now. So, like, I see the optical illusion. But the background is clearly yellow in the picture? So I don’t understand how your brain is interpreting that part? To me it seems like you’re ignoring the background of the image for this point. Can you go more in depth on that part, specifically? Does that yellow light look blue to you?
Looks like a sunny background and that the dress is in the shade
So the idea is that the dress is, what, covered in an exactly dress shaped and sized amount of shade? Or else why wouldn’t we see shade anywhere else?
Because shade works in 3D and it’s not clear how far away the background is from this picture. But yes, ‘dress shaped and size amounts of shade’ exist; trees, could be on a shaded balcony, etc.
Maybe I’m just an elevated being but I can clearly tell that the righthand side is a mirror on a wall and that the tan below it is where the floor meets the wall. Because of that, I can roughly make out the angle and know that we should be seeing some shade on the side if any existed in the first place.
Does that make sense?
No because it’s your subconscious, otherwise you’d have no problem understanding why it’s was ambigious. (Same applies for elevated beings - they can grasp differences in human colour perception).
And either way, even if your assumptions were true you still don’t know the angle of the sun, potential coverings, etc. You can’t predict the shade without that info so the logical choice would be to use the colours the pixels display.
The potential coverings would have to be exactly the shape of the dress because of the sleeves, no? We would see the shade passing underneath? Like onto the obvious clothing rack underneath the left sleeve?
No because you can’t see the floor underneath.
Looks like a fence with holes in it to the left, can see the sun through the holes in the distance.