Optical Illusions

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[–] jmill@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 months ago

I usually see this as black and blue, but today saw white and gold. I snapped it back by holding my hand over my phone and making a gap between fingers only over a bit of the dress. Can't see white and gold now.

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[–] RougeEric@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

Genuine question then: for you, what colors are:

the general environment on the right?
the horizontal piece sticking out on the right? (a piece of wood, or the shade on a ledge I guess)
the dress(?) on the left?

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[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

the general environment on the right?

Brownish near the top, with a red spot. Below that everything seems to be overexposed, and the overexposed parts look bright. Yellowish hues are there.

the piece of wood on the right?

Brown

the dress(?) on the left?

Darker brown, looks like it likes probably lighter in proper lighting though

I know I said "brown" a lot but I have full colour vision.

Is anything I described different from what you see?

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[–] RougeEric@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 child)

The right side is white near the top (nearly pure white, likely sunlight overblown by the photo), there is some generally dark clutter with a spot of red, and then a white or pale beige lit with yellow-ish lighting.

The "beam" is either some light wood, or just the shadow on a ledge; it is made brown-ish because of the yellow lighting's illumination but lack of exposure to the exterior backlighting.

The dress on the left is white and black. Made yellow and dark-ish brown-ish by overexposure and strong yellow indoor lighting.

Fundamentally, and the science points to this, you are likely seeing the environmental yellow as actual colors, and not the result of lighting; which I understand on paper... but I cannot see a scenario where blue lighting would produce a bright yellow when overexposed; even if there is yellow in the actual object colors (because blue-ish light would tarnish the warm colors to light grays or possibly light greens I guess)

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[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 point 6 months ago

Sounds like we are seeing more or less the same thing when it comes to the background.

But I cannot see a scenario where blue lighting would produce a bright yellow when overexposed

I think the contrast provided by the strips is what makes the difference here. We don't see colour in isolation, our brain only processes colours in relation to other colours. For example, take this optical illusion:

The squares A and B are actually exactly the same colour and tone, here. If you look at each square in isolation (by eg zooming in 1000x on your screen) you'll see this clearly. It's only when the squares are put into the context of the full scene that this starts to sound counterintuitive. So we are not just processing the colour itself. We are processing the relationship that colour has to other colours.

Similarly, with the black/white + white/gold combo, I think there are probably some similarities in the relations between these two colours. If I had to guess, I'd say that when you look at the wavelength size of these colours, the black/white + white/gold combos would have the same ratios between them. Put differently: in colour space, the distance between black and blue is the same distance that white is from gold. So the relative distances between these two colours are the same even though the colours themselves are very different. That's just my best guess anyway.