This dress drove the internet crazy because people couldn't agree on the color of it.
Some saw blue and black, others saw white and gold.
Now, there’s already a ton of videos and articles about #TheDress, and while most of
the explanations involve perception (and, yes, that is a huge part of why everyone is
tripping out), it doesn't explain how this photograph came to be.
In addition, I’ve read some articles where I don’t find their explanations to be satisfactory,
or complete, So I wanted to jump on a quick video to explain why I think there is a little
bit more to the story.
Now, the majority of the reactions to this photograph were “what are you even talking
about?
This dress is clearly blah blah blah blah” And It’s pretty hard to imagine the dress
in being any other color.
Personally, I had a similar experience.
I opened up the photo, looked at it, and without really reading any of the comments, I thought
that the dress was blue and brown.
I didn’t really understand what the fuss was about, until I opened it again later that
day, after people were sending me that link, and every single person was commenting about
this dress, and I started freaking out because I saw white and gold.
I checked that it was the same image, not some photoshopped image, and sure enough it
was the same thing.
And then I went on to read ten thousand articles about this dress.
But why do we see the dress as different colors?
And why is it one way or the other?
If you’ve seen some of my other videos, you might already have an idea of what’s
going on.
It’s has to do with perception.
Depending on certain assumptions your brain makes, you see one way or the other.
People in the white and gold camp read as the dress being lit from behind, and there
is a blue shadow casted on to the dress.
Our brain compensates by telling us, “Oh this is a blue shadow on top, so the actual
object is not as blue.”
But in actuality the object is lighter and warmer, giving us white and gold.
People in the blue and black camp, which according to this buzzfeed poll, are clearly have a
different experience when viewing this photo.
Now, here’s where I see a lot of explanations that I do not quite agree with.
Posts where people are taking swatches the from photo and posting hex codes, and arguing
“this proves that the dress is blah blah blah”, isn’t a good explanation.
It’s not the object that you’re taking a swatch from, but a photograph.
And the photograph itself is badly taken, it’s not good quality, it’s not well hit,
it’s not color balanced.
So that’s a waste of time.
I’ve also seem explanations that there is a really, really, really strong yellow light,
And that’s why it appears lighter than the actually blue and black.
I don’t think is a complete answer.
It just isnt how a camera would work.
Really, what I think this shows is that the smartphone taking the picture isn’t perfect,
and this photo clearly demonstrates that.
I still love you though.
We might take it for granted today because we have these fancy digital auto-everything
cameras, but taking a photo isnt simply capturing a scene.
I mean, it is, but there’s a lot going on behind it.
When you take a photo on your smartphone, it will do a bunch of different things in
attempt to make the photo look good.
That means adjusting a bunch of different things, including the lighting, the brightness,
the contrast, saturation, your white balance.
When the object is too dark in that specific scene, a lot of times what will happen is
that the digital camera will artificially boost that brightness, so that the object
can show up.
That, I think is what led it to this strange mutilated image that internet is now freaking
out about.
What I suspect is that this person was trying to take a photo of the dress in a not so well
lit room.
When you have a brighter background and a not well lit object or a darker object - in
this case the dress is both not well lit and a dark blue and black color - What will happen
is that the object becomes backlit.
It’s really hard for the camera to read details on the object itself.
While our eyes are really good at focusing, adjusting brightness and colors automatically
without us thinking about it, a camera can have a bit more difficulty.
Particularly when you have the both ends of the spectrum in the same frame: something
really, really bright, and something really, really dark.
What your automatic digital camera will do, is that they’ll favor one over the other.
It will favor whatever they think is the subject (whether its auto detecting or you selecting
that object as the subject) and it will do all the things I mentioned earlier, but prioritizing
that subject.
In certain conditions it works really well, in others, not so much.
Sometimes (or a lot of the times) it gets a bit confused.
Probably, what happened was when they tried to photograph the dress, they notices that
the dress was too dark to see any details.
So what do you do?
You tap that!
On your phone..
you tap.. your screen…
So your phone goes, “Ok, now I know this is important to you, I’m going to try my
best so that it shows up in the photo.”
So it lightens the whole image, which you can tell from the blown out white background,
and then does something interesting.
And then it tried to white balance and thought that the blue was actually white.
White balance is a really important function in the camera that basically makes colors
appears as they should.
It makes white look white, and then it shifts all the colors along so that they’re the
right color.
So you don’t have images where things are slightly tinted blue or yellow.
When the phone software tries to do something so funky, like adjusting the white balance
to a blue color, a bunch of weird things will happen, like it will lighten up the entire
image, and then it will shift all these cooler colors to a warmer color.
(Which is why you see things like the black color, which is already lightened up to gray,
shift into a warm brown) and so on.
So if your brain read the photo as overly exposed and washed out, your brain can compensate
by increasing that saturation and darkening the image so that you see a blue and black
dress.
And that, my friends, is how a confused phone managed to freak the heck out of the internet.
Now that you have a couple explanations of what might be going on, can you see the dress
both ways?
While your perception can be a stubborn, it’s not set in stone.
You might be like me, when you look at it you see one way, then look at it again, and
see it the other way
Here’s my tips of how to flip your vision if you want to see what the other camp is
seeing.
To see white and gold, focus on these lighter bits.
After staring for a bit, your brain will automatically try to “White balance” the image, and
the lighter areas will become lighter.
I also find it helps to look at this top half of the dress.
(Feel free to pause as needed)
To see the blue dress, focus on the darker folds of the dress.
Personally I find it best in these two areas.
After a bit, do you see the blue becoming more darker and more saturated?
Let me know if these tips worked for you!
And, What color do you see the dress as?
I’d love to hear in the comment section below.
If you liked this video and want to learn more about optical illusions, you’ve stumbled
to the right place because I got a video for that!
In fact, I‘ve got several.
I recommend “Can you trust your Eyes?
Explained” for more color optical illusions, and “Sensation and Perception” to learn
more about why we see optical illusions!
Please like and subscribe for more videos, Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see
you next time.