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What colour is this dress?

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  • Justin Meisse
  • Stinger88
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    Stinger88 polycounter
    And with a bit of photoshoppery, the left is pretty close to how i saw it this morning...
    egzm95.jpg
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    I see a very vibrant white and gold dress next to a darker photo of a white and gold dress. The biggest mystery is after seeing the actual dress, that is one shitty camera.

    looks completely different
    thatdamneddress.png
  • Tekoppar
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    Tekoppar polycounter lvl 10
    Just gonna repost what spiderDude posted. You guys should really go watch it. http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/do-you-see-what-i-see-video_872bd93cd.html
  • AtticusMars
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    AtticusMars greentooth
    I see a very vibrant white and gold dress next to a darker photo of a white and gold dress. The biggest mystery is after seeing the actual dress, that is one shitty camera.

    looks completely different
    thatdamneddress.png
    I see both as black and blue, the only difference is that the one on the left looks like an obviously overexposed photo.

    The only image in this thread in which it looks to me like it's white (or light blue) and gold is the XKCD image.

    A friend suggested the reason why they look different is because the photo on the left has difficult lighting to orient the viewer to and so the the local color of the dress will be determined by whether or not their brain thinks they're looking at the shadowed side or the lit side and I expect that's probably right.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    I went to lunch with a bunch of artists that primarily do hand painted diffuse work, we were sort of baffled at the idea that it looked black and blue. I wonder if stressing out about painting lighting information for such a long time has made my brain reject the idea that warm colors would equal black. The texture I posted earlier does not have pure 255 255 255 white anywhere in the white marble.

    I did a test, painted what I've seen all day without reference up or color picking. The colors are a bit off when I compared them, a little too light and desaturated too ugh.
    dresscolors01.png

    People may question why I care about color theory more than net neutrality, I've gone a month without the internet, it was the most relaxing month of my life.
  • Deathstick
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    Deathstick polycounter lvl 7
    Heh, reminds me of trying really hard to explain to a client that bright vivid orange will not look like bright vivid orange when placed directly next to the specifically requested bright vivid yellow and bright vivid red because colors are relative and local in actual perception.

    Needless to say they requested it to be more orange regardless, ignored my complementary colors suggestion if they really wanted the orange to be vivid, and only stopped arguing after I sent them a picture of the RGB color wheel values set to literally as orange as you can go.

    Colors are local, and that photo is taken by a shitty over-exposed camera with a terrible background, which is probably causing the whole it looks different depending on which part of the photo you're focusing on in context. The only problem I have trouble with is how the people see black, if anything it would be dark brown no matter what. Then again I bet most people are looking at it sideways on shitty cellphone screens and no backlighting, a high contrast screen with the gamma set crazily, or outdoors with the sun beating down around them causing local perception to = black.

    I see it mostly as white/gold, although the white being an offwhite/slight blue which I thought was caused by shadow/fucked up camera. There was only one instance where I saw it as more towards the black/blue when I scrolled past it quickly, but that was after focusing on a bunch of white images.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    I will not be satisfied until James Gurney weighs in
  • AtticusMars
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    AtticusMars greentooth
    Did the same thing. This is what I'm seeing:

    themysterywillneverbesolved.png

    Edit: your colors look almost perfectly consistent with the left image of the XKCD comic to me btw.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    I tend to work in a brightly lit room, colors look consistent to me all day AFAIK
  • Gusti
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    - Potato camera at work
    - Dress is slightly reflective in its material properties, so ambient light and rebound/bounce light affects its apparent color more intensely.
    - Its a storefront with big windows, lots of sunlight and the store seems to contain a lot of beige/brown colors, like the floor and such as well as a high probability of mirrors on walls seeing as its a clothes shop, which would make the blacks when overexposed seem lighter and a little gold/brown in color.

    I just cant understand at all how anyone with even a remote familiarity with lighting scenes in any 3D package through out the years, or having even the smallest understanding of how light impacts our eyes capability to read texture and color information, would not instantly pick this up and from that easily deduct the actual colors of the materials in question.

    I just dont get it at all.
  • aesir
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    aesir polycounter lvl 18
    I love how insane justin is going over this thing.
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    I see it as White and Gold and then over the course of 3 seconds it changes to Blue and Black.

    I've actually loved seeing people talk about this when they see something different and they just cannot accept that people see other colors ha
  • Deathstick
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    Deathstick polycounter lvl 7
    Autocon wrote: »
    I've actually loved seeing people talk about this when they see something different and they just cannot accept that people see other colors ha
    That's because... THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!! /end Jack Nicholson voice, unplug internet.
  • aajohnny
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    aajohnny polycounter lvl 13
    Who cares, seriously? Why is this such a big deal? At the most this should be mildly interesting and left on facebook. It's like people have never seen an optical illusion before.

    QFT











    Also I see Blue and Black.
  • Steppenwolf
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    Steppenwolf polycounter lvl 15
    As silly as the whole viral thing is, from an artist perspective this is actualy an interesting topic. As i understand it most people don't argue about what the dress is supposed to be but what colors they actualy see in the picture. I think any artists who actualy sees this as straight up white/gold or blue/black has a reason to be worried. Best case your monitor calibration is off, worst case your eyes are fucked.
  • Odow
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    Odow polycounter lvl 8
    My brain is dead. I saw the dress white and gold, i scroll and read until page 2 cause i couldn'T understand shit about that stuff. Then i went back to the first post thinking i miss an explanatino and the dress change color ;_; wtf
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    forget the whole dress thing, have we just discovered the rgb for gold!?
  • Muzzoid
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    Muzzoid polycounter lvl 10
    Silly Eld.

    Real artists know that the albedo for gold is 0,0,0. (it's actually what it is)

    Actually off topic. But did you know the reason why gold looks like gold is a physics glitch to do with quantization of energy bands?

    http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/9.html

    EDIT:

    Actually something i realized with the dumb dress thing. Because of how i work with colour, ie dealing with colour blindness. I just see the actual rgb values of the photo and my brain makes no assumption towards the scene.

    As in, i think i actually trained my brain to work past colour biases to a certain extent.
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    Makkon wrote: »

    That is sublime Makkon!

    I have been making relativity examples for family and friends coming to me for clarification ( I imagine many others here are being referred to for their expertise as artists by their circle of family and friends? )

    Your version has provided the epiphany my pitiful rushed attempts failed to accomplish. Did u dish that up yerself??

    edit: ahhh. nevermind, I missed the xkcd link.
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    As an example I pulled an old tired faded black t-shirt that I knew cast a gold hazy highlight at the glancing angles. That seemed to work as an example where viewers could see the gold as just overexposed/blown out pic of black fabric.
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    I went to lunch with a bunch of artists that primarily do hand painted diffuse work, we were sort of baffled at the idea that it looked black and blue. I wonder if stressing out about painting lighting information for such a long time has made my brain reject the idea that warm colors would equal black.

    hmmm that's interesting...
    to fake black fabric I usually try to sell it with "warmth"? as if faded.
    hopefully the following looks like a faded black t-shirt? and is accomplished with a warm color pallette strategy?:

    3515887524_f9e34c7469_o.jpg

    And the warm glancing angles hopefully sell "gold haze" of faded black at those highlights?

    9843_1241878825_orig.jpg

    compared to the tips of the boots where leather scruffed up there should sell
    "faded boot leather" with a light cool blue cast?

    I assume most artists have a catalog of such color strategies based on years of observation/psychological assumption. ( correct or not )
    I also assumed that artists would recognise the cues and artifacts of say...
    an "off"-white balance?
    blown out lighting?
    overexposure?
    Aforementioned catolog of what temperature a highlight might be at the glancing angle of a particular faded fabric compared to a new fabric?
    Most artists who have put in some years of study...
    have probably slaved a lifetime over the actual colors used to describe the temperature of adjacent white walls.

    If we are going to slave over the psychological effect we are striving for in a color pallete
    ( say the zeitgeist of pink and black to describe 1950's Americana )
    Only to find that 72% of your audience is missing the "historical color association" seeing instead say... gold and green?
    ( because u also unwittingly choose a freaky illusion creating, "lo fidelity" 8mm filmic Zapruder look to further compliment that zeitgeist! )
    I have to then agree that the topic seems relevant to an artistic forum?
    I suppose the matter would be trivial if 1% of the population could not get a blue and black dress from what seems to me, to simply be...
    Obvious cues!
    But the statistic I got during yesterday's morning news was 72%.
  • dfacto
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    dfacto polycounter lvl 18
    Honestly, the black is not the problem, I could see the brown sections as black, but the white just doesn't look like it could be dark blue. Under no lighting condition that I've ever encountered have I seen dark blue look like that. This is just a horrid photo.
  • Zocky
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    Zocky greentooth
    I still don't quiet get what exactly is being debated here.

    Is the topic what kind of color the dress in reality is, or what color do we see it on that pic?

    If the later, to me it's obviously light blue with gold, and if you use PS, it comfirms that.

    So is it that some people actually see it dark blue with black? Or is it that actual dress is suppose to be like that? If the later, with various lighting conditions and reflectivity and such things, i guess it can turn from black-blue into white-gold under certain conditions.
  • paco
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    paco polycounter lvl 3
    @Zocky

    I think everyone agrees that the physical dress is dark blue/black. When people look at that photo, and are asked "what colour do you think this dress is" they tend to say either "white / gold" or "blue / black"

    Objectively the colours are a light blue / brown as proven by colour picking.

    What is different is how people interpret the image, and if they are asked to guess what colour the dress is in reality, based off just that photo, there are two wildly different answers. For a lot of people it seems to flip between the two.
  • DEElekgolo
  • JordanN
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    JordanN interpolator
    Judging real life color from a monitor is never a good idea.
  • Muzzoid
  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    People may question why I care about color theory more than net neutrality, I've gone a month without the internet, it was the most relaxing month of my life.
    That statement just had a deep impact in my life. Thank you sir.
  • Brantis
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    I still think that this needs to be seen in person to experience it. Everyone I know says its Blue and Black..
  • PixelMasher
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    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    Muzz wrote: »

    pretty awesome. ( blue is new for humans! )
    Homer didn't know what a blue sky looked like?

    Guess it could it explain a percentage not getting the blown out blue cue?
    Sort of like why large populations are lactose intolerant.
    In college I always considered weak colorists to simply be lazy in observation.
    I guess I have to re-evaluate my stance.

    I wonder if the same is true with the modern saturated red we get to enjoy today?
    I always assumed that artists suffered with alizarin as the best red pigment discovered till the 19th century.
    ( just do a survey of paintings up until the mid 1800's... no cadmium or other saturated reds )
    Speaking Cadmium pigments...
    If u r in Europe u might want to stock up! Hopefully the ban will not happen.



    I guess that means it's probable ( at least a precedent? ) future generations will see ultraviolet and infrared!
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