What color is the dress?

[Heather Koch]

Check out this link.. Explains everything you think you see but what actually is being seen!

 

[photophil18]

Im color blind. Its black and white!

 

[W.Y.Photo]

RIT color scientists explain the dress that went viral - RIT News

 

[MRnats]

Seems like the majority of people saying white & gold in my circle of friends are women.... is this some cruel joke that women are playing on men? lol

I noticed this too. My wife works in an elementary school system (which is predominantly female) and I said "let me guess, you all saw white and gold" and she replied yes. She still thinks that's the correct color.

 

[Tinderbox (UK)]

According to a poll on a website already quoted, there is not a a huge difference between men a women.

But what is strange as some people initially saw it as white/gold and then later saw it blue/black or are they just lying, now they know it is really blue/black?

John.

Seems like the majority of people saying white & gold in my circle of friends are women.... is this some cruel joke that women are playing on men? lol

I noticed this too. My wife works in an elementary school system (which is predominantly female) and I said "let me guess, you all saw white and gold" and she replied yes. She still thinks that's the correct color.

 

[sm4him]

 

[photoguy99]

Well done, RIT scientists. That is the first correct and compete description I've seen. Well, apart from mine!

 

[limr]

But what is strange as some people initially saw it as white/gold and then later saw it blue/black or are they just lying, now they know it is really blue/black?

I first saw the picture as white and gold. I scrolled down to the end of the page to finish reading the article and then scrolled back up to see the picture again. Suddenly it looked blue. But it wasn't the royal blue and black that other people are seeing. It looked pale blue and the lace still didn't look black. It looked an ugly shade of tan. And that's still how it looks to me - light blue and dark tan. I understand it's a blue and black dress and I understand the explanations about why people see it differently; I still don't see black and blue when I look at the original picture. No matter what screen I'm looking at, no matter the brightness setting, no matter the angle....it's still sky blue and baby poop color.

 

[480sparky]

View attachment 96245

War of 1812. Duh!

 

[Tinderbox (UK)]

Well i have always seen a bluish white and gold, does anybody see a pure white?

John.

But what is strange as some people initially saw it as white/gold and then later saw it blue/black or are they just lying, now they know it is really blue/black?

I first saw the picture as white and gold. I scrolled down to the end of the page to finish reading the article and then scrolled back up to see the picture again. Suddenly it looked blue. But it wasn't the royal blue and black that other people are seeing. It looked pale blue and the lace still didn't look black. It looked an ugly shade of tan. And that's still how it looks to me - light blue and dark tan. I understand it's a blue and black dress and I understand the explanations about why people see it differently; I still don't see black and blue when I look at the original picture. No matter what screen I'm looking at, no matter the brightness setting, no matter the angle....it's still sky blue and baby poop color.

 

[Battou]

What if I told you all it was Black and White with shitty WB and exposure due to conflicting light sources, and that you all fell victim to an optical word puzzle.

 

[Derrel]

YES, this specific photo does function very much as a visual perception case study sample. It's shocked people who study this kind of stuff. Wired magazine's website has a pretty good article here The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress WIRED

 

[curly]

Seems like the majority of people saying white & gold in my circle of friends are women.... is this some cruel joke that women are playing on men? lol

I noticed this too. My wife works in an elementary school system (which is predominantly female) and I said "let me guess, you all saw white and gold" and she replied yes. She still thinks that's the correct color.

All the women I have asked have said white/gold except for 1-2. All the men I have asked have said blue/black except for 1-2 (one of which has terrible eyesight, lol).

My wife is convinced on white/gold and says I am overdue on my eye exam!

 

[rwilliams]

Someone please help me to understand. The picture released from the actual dress on Amazon is a VERY blue and VERY obviously black dress. What kind of lighting would possibly make it so light in the picture that went viral? I would have sworn it was a white and gold dress and the white balance was off... I can edit pictures to make a white dress look blueish.. But I can't figure out how the black would become such a goldish brown color?!

I was one of the ones that saw it as gold and white. I couldn't at all understand how my husband was seeing black. I still don't understand, even though I know the actual dress really is blue and black.

 

[Battou]

It is not just the visual in this. We live in a world that when presented with two options and told to choose one, we choose one. It is rare to find an adult who can sit there and say none of the above when there is no check box for none of the above. Add in the visual cue and world war three is in the making.

If this dress is in fact the Roman bodycon dress and not some Forever 21 knockoff (Which I would not rule out as possible), it is available in four colors: White/black, Royal Blue/black, Red/black and Pink/black. That pale perrywinkle blue is not an option. Reverting to photography experience, in order to get Royal blue that pale the dress needs to be overexposed drastically. We all should know from experience photographing something in front of a window like this will result in varied exposure, often to extremes. Look to the right in the overexposed section out the window. See any detail? You do? Oh well ok, since the dress is inside and those details are outside the overexposure is to be expected. However to overexpose the dress in front of the window the entire space of the window would be blown out to nuke levels. My cell phone has a very good sensor for a cell phone, among the best in class (was best in it's class at one point) and it would have that very effect attempting to overexpose this shot. We can see details though, this tells me to ignore the color for the time being. All of a sudden average metering makes perfect sense, meter for this = serious over exposure here, Meter for that = serious under exposure there, Phone says screw it meet in the middle and the idiot behind the phone will be none the wiser (Hell, even my SLRs do this).

Examining the exposure with that in mind it is clear that the dress is a stop or two underexposed while the background is a stop or two over exposed. Ok, so if that is under exposed how can royal blue be that pale? Yeah your guess is as good as mine. Moving on to WB....Phone says my user is on Auto mode....is it florescent or sunny, Can't tell, perhaps it is both.....**** it it's incandescent, idiot behind the phone don't know the difference, that is why they use auto mode, right. (My Sisters Mavica, her other latter sony dP&S as well as her HP dP&S used to do that ****, pissed me off to no end) Anyone who has shot incandescent mode in non incandescent light knows what happens, anyone who doesn't, wip out your phone, set it to incandescent and look at something white, like a piece of paper.

Now you have a white dress that looks blue and not the same blue the dress is actually available in as well as a very confused cell phone pictogetter who was fairly confident she took a picture of a white dress.

Lets just say, for the sake of saying so for further discrediting of overexposure of the blue dress. With phones it takes concerted conscious effort to deliberately overexpose a cell phone shot you have to adjust EV manually, which most people who shoot with a cell don't bother to do for any one of a handful of reasons.

Those analyzing the photo are making one major mistake, I made this same mistake while explaining it on Facebook too. Taking the written word as a matter of fact. White balance is called white balance for a reason as white will show any stray color cast (Most commonly the result of lighting type) present while black will not, this we as photographers all know (or at least should know that). So, if black remains constant, Attempting to white balance with autopilot it at this point is futile as sucking out the blue results in a gold silk with a white sheen. At the same time if you WB it to blue the sheen in the black becomes an unnatural muddy orangyred. You stop and manually white balance it to white with the understanding that the silk and lace are black with a slightly tinted sheen you get an underexposed white dress with black silk with a semi-natural pale amber sheen.