ProgrammerHumor
notThisAgain
Discussion
If only we weren't all tech people who know how to use a color picker on an image
Technically a miscalibrated white balance could shift whites to blue. Though it wouldn’t make gold black.
You mean blues to whites and black to gold ;)
It's a shadowy white that is tainted blue ~(133, 148, 189) and a shadowy gold ~(106, 88, 76).
The fun part is that the white looks more blue (112, 146, 190) than white.
Not sure which part people call black though. Is it the thin lines?
Not sure which part people call black though
The black lace parts, perhaps? ;)
The photo is infamous for having horrendous lighting and overexposure, but the dress itself is blue with black lace trim. After it blew up online, the company even made a white/gold version that got auctioned for charity.
Well of course it's blue and black. You can clearly see it in the picture.
Actually it says “Laurel”
the gold bits are actually black on the real dress, and the white part is blue.
under what light does black become gold?
Horrendous over exposure and warm light
For the first time, just now, I was able to see the blue/black, in my peripheral vision, as I was reading your text. I realized that it was looking blue and black above where I was looking at the text.
As soon as I look directly at it, it's back to white/gold.
Apparently it just comes down to what kind of lighting your brain assumes is present when there's not other context, so most people can never switch. That's why it got so heated back in the day - most people can only see one of the two options, and has no idea how it could ever look like the other one.
Nope, the actual dress is black and blue. The background light is a bright golden color causing the black to shift to gold and the blue to shift towards white.
So it's reflective black is what you're saying.
As in the image doesn't show the color at all, it shows a reflection.
It works like that: https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/s/fqNRme4c6n
Ok, so I had to check this.
Actual black objects don't change their color when illuminated by colored light. The real dress color is not full black, but more like (32, 32, 32). Because of this, the colored light can change the way it looks.
The image in the link uses (36, 41, 64) for black, which gets transformed by (198, 190, 168) light into (141, 127, 100).
Still crazy how almost black objects can look so much different through external lighting. People are way too used to natural light as the only light source I guess.
"actual black objects", this ain't Vantablack we're talking about lol, most people understand that black on a material is not going to be that perfect a black
Wait, are those decimal numbers?
0-255 rgb numbers
I'm convinced it's a troll flash mob. No way anyone actually believes it's black. But people just agreed to aggressively argue that it is.
Im stealing this from another comment, but this is the actual dress, its black and blue, the lighting and composition on the picture just makes it weird, and since we all experience color differently, some people end up seeing it as white and gold.
I think what tricks my brain is that it looks like the background is brighter, implying that the part of the dress we see is shaded. As much as I try I can't see it as being brightly and warmly illuminated.
Yeah, it looks like there is a bright yellow light source behind the dress, which makes the camera have to adjust for the light.
That causes the whole image to get brighter and grainer, due to adjusted contrast and saturation, and other camera magic i don’t know about. And with the side of the dress were seeing getting lightly lit by the yellow light behind it, it distorts the colors enough to make it look like a shaded white/gold dress to some people.
It’s a pretty neat accidental optical illusion.
The frustrating thing is, I feel the same way towards this being white. It feels impossible that anyone actually sees it white, but I know people who’ve seen both, and it feels like a prank
Its that combined with the over exposure. The blown out light in the back gives that away. Dress was too dark for the camera so it boosted ISO causing distortion. Also why its all grainy and low quality.
That's why I never understood how people got tricked by this image, the background makes it very obvious.
Well if you photograph someones back who wears the gold and white version against the sun near sunset with a shitty camera it'd look the same
The white balance would be pulled towards the warmer end tinting the white blue and the camera would reduce the exposure making it a but darker
I do a fair amount of photography and can't see the blue and black despite understanding what's going on
It's not a conscious decision
Ok, snelly merd
They provided the file, all the info is there. Take it at its literal values and don't interpret shit.
Image files are not always accurate. And yes it’s blue and black. What I described is just what tricks your brain into believing that it isn’t
What's the trick?
It's still gold and white (blue/gray) on the photo.
Regardless of what it is IRL.
You don't call red eyes on a photo blue either.
The dress is definitely blue in the picture.
The original debate was about what it was IRL. And ppl believed it was white gold because crappy smartphone cameras back then often shifted the wb under poor light
I don’t think people debated what the actual dress color was. All the conversations I ever had about it were specifically about that photo. The color of the actual dress was more an interesting wrench to throw in the gears of the conversation.
And that's where people started trolling on what you can see.
That was maybe a bit unfortunate wording from my part. For some people the brain is doing a white balance adjustment due to the contrast in the image. Our brain makes a lot of subconscious assumptions about what we are seeing. And sometimes it takes a wrong turn
Sure, it might not be an accurate image file. However, you have the image and you might have the color profile. Use those to get the colors and don't think outside that data. Let them come back with the perceptual BS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress#/media/File%3AWikipe-tan_wearing_The_Dress_reduced.svg
Color is subjective. It exists only in the brain.
In an image file it is no longer subjective, it’s ones and zeros. It doesn’t matter who looks at it, that pixel has a certain value.
A value is not a color. Unless you have synesthesia.
A value represents a color, at the file level I really don’t care which one. If they hand me a file and say this is the scheme then i pull out values and use them. It’s up to them to make sure those values are the ones they want.
In practice it represents a color, but with several caveats.
Approximately #A6B5B5.
But it can make black gold, oddly enough.
Even if the colors are technically perfect, if the client perceives them differently they'll probably complain, right? I don't do any UI stuff, but that seems to be how people in general work.
That's the thing though.
Dev would use color picker. Build a whole template put thinking they are good on color scheme and directions.
2 weeks into development the client sees a sample and says it's all wrong.
Technical question: Where would you pick the colour?
That only tells you what the color in the image file is, not what the actual object is. Environmental light, flash, color balance, and even the fact that our eyes do not work the same way as a camera can throw colors way off
Yeah but that's a pointless statement that could be made about any single photo. If someone says what color is the dress, you can only answer what color it is in the actual picture.
It's pointless to guess at the color it might be in real life as it could be photo manipulated in anyway. You would just be guessing.
Therefore the answer should be, blue and gold. Because that's literally whats in the picture.
If you wanted to be spicy you could add "well I think the image is oversaturated and the real dress is probably back and blue" after.
Although you’re technically correct, nobody would care what color the pixels are. So saying that without disclaimer is just a bad answer.
The frontend guy where I work made the website text black following the client's instructions that it should be "black". The client then emailed that the whole text on the site was looking "off" but couldn't point out why.
After some back and forth with the client I sent a slack to my coworker: "Dude, make it #363637, that's black to him".
Oh, the client couldn't be happier when we "fixed" it.
I almost always go with #222222 or #333333 instead of pure black
Ah the classic slight blue tinge
Lol... It's 0.4% more blue than it is red or green.
Sorry to contradict you, but it's 2.7% more blue. You're calculating over the whole range, where you should compare to only 36, which is the value of the other two colors.
Believe it or not, when looking at a wall of text it does make a difference
Lol, we're both wrong.
You're right that I did my calculation wrong, but you're incorrect about the final percentage. The other two colors are actually 54 because this is hexadecimal. Blue is 55, so one unit more than 54.
Therefore, (1/54)x100=1.85% more blue than red or green.
Yes, that's the joke, thank you for explaining it
As soon as it enters the more neutral background it snaps to being white and yellow for me and I can't see it as blue and black anywhere near the right half of the screen. One big issue is all the context like skin color etc
yellow magic fuckery
White & Gold, got it.
When this dress was a big hype, I set it as my second monitor desktop background image because I really thought people were trolling online.
I would always see the dress as white/gold until one evening, I got up to go get water and came back and it was blue/black...it lasted the whole evening and "reverted" to white/gold the next day.
I love this photo because it is an accidental visual illusion. Typically those types of illusions come from a cleverly engineered image to trick the brain.
I have never been able to see this as blue & black and I am having trouble even imagining how people see it that way. Wild.
And me feeling same for white and gold. Still seeing it black and blue
One day I randomly saw it as white and gold, the feeling of “ohhhhh I get it now” was unparalleled.
After that day, no dice, I can only remember the feeling
Does this help at all? https://tjkelly.com/wp-content/uploads/dress-blue-black-white-gold.jpg
No, just looks like lighter blue and black.
Damn
Meanwhile I saw it white and gold only once and I was sure the effect is ruined now by photo compression and that's why I can't see white and gold anymore
Try to cross your eyes, and focus/defocus
As someone who could see both, it basically looks like this: https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/-mm-/098f08c32cfbef6f4bdac2f70f11a2a43a1c8266/c=0-70-2145-2930/local/-/media/2015/03/03/USATODAY/USATODAY/635609659190700970-Ellen-dress.jpg
It's a little washed out and potato cammy, but it's more or less that big of a difference. It's not a subtle "well I guess you could call it that slight off white blue, if you want to" change.
Also, I always find it funny when the direction people "can't understand how you're seeing that" is from the white/gold side (my wife is that way) as the dress just objectively IS blue and black, and rather dark for that matter. She thinks I'm crazy or pretending, even though to the extent an optical illusion has an "objective" answer, team white/gold are objectively incorrect.
Does this help at all? https://tjkelly.com/wp-content/uploads/dress-blue-black-white-gold.jpg
wtf, now I can see it black and blue, whereas I could only see it white and gold before. Your last image definitely helped!
Score. Did it change how you see the "real" one at all, or do you just see it in the left image?
It changed how I see the real one! I don't see it as white and gold anymore!
Holy shit, I see black and blue finally. For some reason I cannot see it as gold & white anymore
Nice, it's wild how different it is, right?
I remember I once was able to see white and gold but I don't remember how. It involved crossing my eyes or looking at something else before I like at it or something. Not generally speaking it's always blue and black.
I've never been able to see white and gold...so yeah
Try scaling it to 1/10 or smaller, it become blue/black to me and it become gold white when I scale it back.
You can use color sampling to find out that there is nothing yellow/golden about this image. It's mostly shades of blue.
I just checked, color picker returns a shade of yellow if I click on the dress
But (for me) it looks like a white and gold dress in the shade from the surrounding sunlight.
Right, your eyes are wrong though. It's a blue dress.
I'd say my brain's perception of it is wrong - because the truth is it is a blue dress, but my eyes are seeing whatever anyone else is seeing.
Of course, I wasn't talking medically.
Shadows don't make anything be that blue though.
I picked #7F714B from the neck part. And claim it looks black IRL as much as you may, that is a yellow/beige/brown tone.
Clearly the image is overexposed and shifted too warm, because the whites in the background are yellowish and blown out.
That be as it may, doesn't really change that the comment I am answering to said
You can use color sampling to find out that there is nothing yellow/golden about this image. It's mostly shades of blue.
which clearly leads to my result.
Sir, I hate to remind you again that varnish is not a drink.
You fucking did this on purpose
Hush.
You can zoom as far as you can into the gold part and it is not blue. The dress may be one thing but that image sure does look to have yellow/golden hues to it.
Oh boy
Actually the white part is apparently blue and the gold is black.
There is absolutely tonnes of beigy gold all over that dress.
I understand that IRL that's black, but in the image it is beigy gold, a colour picker confirms this. MS Paint says everything that looks brown here is brown.
A few years ago my wife and I came across one of these dresses in a Goodwill. It was like meeting a celebrity.
$primary-theme-color: #7b6c46;
$secondary-theme-color: #fff;
Done
Client: Hex codes? What kind of witchraft malarkey is this? Are you trying to put a digital curse on me so I become one of those gayosexuals? I specifically told you I want the color to be baby corpse blue, like my suit on my 5th wedding in 1948 which you can clearly see in this black and white photo!
Secondary should be in rbg, and tertiary color in hsl
Just lifted the colors straight from the original meme image with a color picker. If someone wants to argue that #786642 is black, then what's even the point of language, since we've clearly stopped using a shared lexicon?
Never understood people seeing white and gold. It's very obvious the photo was taken in a very sunny place.
The illusion requires a tinted background colour.
This image can be interpreted as yellow and gold with a blue background tint, or blue and black with a yellow background tint.
It is impossible to discern from the picture which is right (the actual dress is in fact blue and black).
Additionally the device you're viewing it on, as well as the ambient background lighting of the room you view the picture on can affect it as well.
However people are most likely to continue seeing the image as whatever they first saw it as.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
Plenty of information and theories here if you're actually interested in understanding
I can understand gold, but how could you not see the blue??
I'm convinced that people post on this sub to farm karma.
You are brave to say those are people.
It's blue and black. Trust me
It’s blue and black on my machine
The only right answer
What? I saw pink and orange /s
White background, black text, gold accents and splash in some split complementary highlights like teal & turquoise.
Then explain color theory to the client (you do know color theory, right?) and give them a few options.
There is no color, no dress and no lighting.
This case was settled when the original poster showed a picture of the dress in ordinary lighting and the dress was clearly black and blue.
I'll never understand this. I see blue and gold. When I go to the color picker and separate the colors it shows blue and gold.
Is the entire population just daft?
I can’t for the life of me see blue/black
And I just can't see white/gold
This gif is the first time I was able to see both.
Get me the Pantone numbers and we’re good..
Color picker.
Light mode - white and gold
Dark mode - black and blue
I don’t understand this, I’ve never been able to see it as anything except blue and black
I've never seen this dress change colors, it's always black and blue
No, No, No! This time is different!
Js dev would just pipe it to it's AI editor and vibe color it!
As someone who spent 20 years in graphic design, this image has always given me nightmares....
I feel cool that I've been able to see it blue and black sometimes and white and gold at other times so I get both sides 😎
Are we that old? 🥲🥲
Oddly, saw this in a shadowed environment and saw white and gold and moved my phone into the light and saw it morph into purple and black in real time. It's all about the lighting and what your mind thinks it should be based off of lighting cues in your background.
Years ago, I actually had a bug where I didn't add a light gray background because my monitor had bad color sensitivity and displayed it completely white, so I didn't know it existed.
Is your client's name Laurel? Or Yanni?
colour picker anybody?
colour picker tool.
I had about 30 minutes where I saw it as white and gold and never again. It was weird af
tldr, the real dress is blue and black, but due to device settings and to some lesser extent personal eyesight it can sometimes appear as white and gold
I mean, this is easy, just run the color picker over it and use those values.
So blue and black, solid choice
White and Gold, you got it 👍
I don't care what "it is" or "what other see" ... I have two eyes and one brain and they came up with White and Gold. If you see something else - good for you ... does not change what I see though.
It’s white and gold
I see white and gold, but the color picker sees blue and brown
Orange dress?
why is this gold white now?
Last time i saw it it was clearly black blue.
“We paid a contractor a ton of money for this image! What do you mean, it’s not good?!”
Meanwhile, contractor: don't redeem the code
DO NOT REDEEM