So this change of colour bothers your brain. Your brain has evolved colour constancy, where it ‘adjusts’ or compensates for the ambient light, removes the reddish influence of the night club lights, and suddenly the sheet of paper looks white despite the fact that it’s reflecting dark red light and actually looks redish. It turns out that specularities can give you top clue as to the actual colour of the ambient light. Visual neuroscientists call these mirrorlike reflections on the shiny part of an object ‘specularities’. Generally, you can tell whether it’s more dark red than another colour, while you can’t accurately estimate that the wavelength of a colour is exactly 575 nanometres. Identical chess piece can look blackish or whitish, relying upon its background colour. I’m sure it sounds familiar. Look, there’re so many optical illusions that use this. Basically, this might make you think that the front of the blueish dress is in shadow. Fact, all you get is the fabric of the blueish dress and a ‘outoffocus’ band of background brightness on the right side of the photo.
Fourth, the photo of the ‘nowfamous’ blueish dress is, purely by accident, beautifully ambiguous.
There is absolutely no bare skin and bare skin always gives you a decent idea as to the true colour.
There are no other dresses, like a whitish wedding gown, that could give you a clue. Normally, the bride posted a photo of the soontobefamous blueish dress online. That said, the mother of the bride wore a dress bought from a British retailer, Roman Originals, for 50 pounds. You should take it into account. It all began with a wedding on the Scottish island of Colonsay. Your brain will apply colour constancy and remove the blueish hue of the shadow and bingo, the dress is whitish, if you assume that the front of the dress is in shadow.
Saw the original story and planned to show my partner so we could laugh at the person in the story who swore it was almost white and gold despite clearly being a dark blue and grey dress.
She swore it was whitish and gold.We had a backwards and forwards over this for a few minutes, neither budging, eventually looking it up, and EVENTUALLY she conceded.
It’s a weird illusion that works on some but not on others. Taylor Swift apparently said she was scared and confused and saw a dark blue dress. Furthermore, celebrities were polarised in their views. Considering the above said. Of the people I have spoken to who see in this picture an almost white dress with a slight blueish tinge and gold stripes, most have excellent night vision. Thanks Dr Karl, This is why we are striving to have oximeters on newborn resuscitaires.
While others assume brightness and a light blue dress, why do lots of people assume shadow and a whitish dress? We don’t know.