What Colors Do You See?

EquALLity · Post by **EquALLity** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 5:36 pm

For those of you who don't already know, there has been tons of coverage of this dress that people see the color of differently on the news, and basically all over the Internet.

Sorry to bring more attention to this (slightly irrelevant) bullshit, but I thought it was pretty interesting, and I'm curious what you guys see in the attachment.

White and gold, or blue and black?
Or something else?

I first couldn't decide between white and gray or white and gold, but then my friend told me there were only two options, so I went with white and gold. I've seen the images that make the dress look slanted to one side (http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-on ... lor-dress/), and after seeing the one skewed to black and blue, I can kind of see a light blue, but not to the level of what the people who see black and blue are.

The dress has been confirmed by the designer to be black and blue, just incase anybody is wondering.

Red · Post by **Red** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:12 pm

Im colorblind i dont know

EquALLity · Post by **EquALLity** » Fri Feb 27, 2015 9:51 pm

RedAppleGP wrote:Im colorblind i dont know

Oh, really? What kind?

Dream Sphere · Post by **Dream Sphere** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 12:05 am

I definitely see white and gold in the unadjusted image. In the changed one to the left, it just looks like the unadjusted one but more washed out and brighter. In the adjusted one to the right the white parts look quite blue, and the gold parts look black in some areas or dark brown in others.

Noting this probably doesn't matter too much but, in the picture depicting the different RGB values of the image, of the six colour samples aligned vertically, the top square that takes a sample of the gold-ish/brown colour I see looks the brightest of the gold/browns, then the second from the bottom looks darker, and the bottom sample which is also of the golds/browns looks the darkest of the bunch. The second sample from the top looks to be almost the same as the fourth from the top, which is a light blue/grey colour, (that I saw as white in the unadjusted image) and the third from the top is darker than either of those in a semi-dark blue/grey sort of colour.

Red · Post by **Red** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:52 am

EquALLity wrote:
RedAppleGP wrote:Im colorblind i dont know
Oh, really? What kind?

I mix up my blues with my yellows. Only certain shades though. Should I say what I think it is, or what I actually see?

EquALLity · Post by **EquALLity** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:58 am

RedAppleGP wrote:
EquALLity wrote:
RedAppleGP wrote:Im colorblind i dont know
Oh, really? What kind?
I mix up my blues with my yellows. Only certain shades though. Should I say what I think it is, or what I actually see?

Both!

brimstoneSalad · Post by **brimstoneSalad** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:38 pm

Why is this blowing up the news? Slow news day? That's the only thing that's absurd to me.

It depends on the lighting conditions, different colored fabrics (which mean they reflect different colors) look different in variable lighting conditions.

In typical outdoor lighting conditions, shadow is blue, direct light is more yellow. Remember that, it's important. Shadow is blue because it's lit by random blue light bouncing around the sky and hitting from all direction. This is called ambient light. Direct light is yellow, because the blue light has been scattered out of it by the atmosphere.

If it's blue light, then it could be white and gold. Because of the bright background, the implication is that the light is slightly blue from ambient sky light as opposed to sun. The blue light would also made the gold more muddy and brown-ish. So in the context of blue light, it seems like it's gold fabric being made to look muddy by the lighting conditions -- the human brain corrects that based on the lighting assumption.

If it's white light, then it's slightly blue and brown. This would be the case if there were large amounts of artificial light, or if ambient and scattered sunlight were in equal proportions.
White light makes things look literal; it's the "default" by which we judge color in normal, balanced lighting conditions.

If it's slightly yellow/orange light, then black and blue is also possible. This would be the case if ambient light was substantially occluded, but scattered sunlight was bouncing into the area off whatever is outside and possibly orange or yellow objects in the environment.
This is an unlikely scenario, since the background makes the dress look like it's in shadow, but based on the real dress colors, this is apparently the actual fact.

A picture ultimately represents the colors that are received by the camera.
Colors also look different when juxtaposed. We evaluate colors differently based on their neighbors and context.

There's a difference between what colors the pixels are, and what colors are interpreted based on context. Here, the context is ambiguous, thus the different interpretations.

I can see all of those "colors" as far as interpretation goes.