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In the days after “The Dress” was posted online, a group led by psychologist Karl Gegenfurtner at Giessen University in Germany asked 15 people to view the photograph on a well-calibrated color screen under controlled lighting. The participants then had to adjust the color of a disc to correspond to the colors they saw in the photograph. For the lighter stripe, participants reported seeing a continuous range of shades from light blue to dark blue, rather than white and blue, the two dominant colors reported so far.
Individuals are less sensitive to blue light when they are older. Which could explain why older netizens are seeing white and gold. But, in the absence of hard-core data relating to age and perceptions regarding the dress, this theory cannot be proved yet. Maybe this will inspire you to realize we all see things differently, in more ways than one. I was able to see the dress in both perspectives, and let me tell ya… Neither is right or wrong.
ABC News
For people who see the dress as it is — black and blue — you're likely seeing the photo as over-exposed, with too much light, meaning that once the retina registers the image, the colors appear darker. Since then, it’s been determined that the dress is actually blue and black with a trick of the light causing many to see it as white and gold. But while the mystery of the dress has been solved, the influence that it has had on Internet culture won’t soon be forgotten. Similar theories have been expounded by the University of Liverpool's Paul Knox, who stated that what the brain interprets as colour may be affected by the device the photograph is viewed on, or the viewer's own expectations. Anya Hurlbert and collaborators also considered the problem from the perspective of colour perception. They attributed the differences in perception to individual perception of colour constancy.
There is no one definitive answer to the question of what the “real” color of the illusion dress is. It depends on the specific dress, and on the lighting and angle at which it is viewed. However, it is generally agreed that the colors of illusion dresses appear different in photographs than they do in person.
Science X
Lucy Hale, Phoebe Tonkin, and Katie Nolan saw different colour schemes at different times. Lady Gaga described the dress as "periwinkle and sand", while David Duchovny called it teal. Other celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres and Ariana Grande, mentioned the dress on social media without mentioning specific colours. Politicians, government agencies and social media platforms of well-known brands also weighed in tongue-in-cheek on the issue. Ultimately, the dress was the subject of 4.4 million tweets within 24 hours.
While variations between different people’s rods and cones can impact the way they interpret colour, that wasn’t what happened with The Dress. Usually, these types of changes in retinal cells from person to person produce only small differences when it comes to colour vision. Whatever was at work in February 2015 with this now-infamous photograph was much bigger than simple rods and cones. I think this dress caused a sensation on social media because it was something that we never seen before and also that people in families see black and blue and the others of that family see gold or white.
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In the scientific world, this is called top-down processing. In the case of The Dress, researchers suggest that the differences in opinion on the colours depend on whether the viewer believes the photo was taken inside or outside. Whether you saw the above dress as blue and black, or white and gold, someone has almost certainly told you that you’re wrong. But you’re not, and neither are they – it’s both colours, depending on who and where you are. The debate was so intense that some anxious souls proclaimed that they were colorblind due to their inability to see what the majority perceived as blue and black.
Of those surveyed, 57 percent described the dress as blue/black, 30 percent described it as white/gold, 11 percent as blue/brown and 2 percent as something else. Some people reported their perception of the colors flipped after being tested again. So, because the photo is taken in lighting with a blue hue, it may be causing the blues in the dress to reflect a white color.
After just two days, there were over 4.4 million tweets about the dress, according to the Observer. The dispute over the hues of the clothing item continued for weeks, inspiring rage-fueled social media arguments, scientific explanations of people’s color perceptions and a multitude of think pieces. Some people swore it was a computer-monitor trick, and that by tilting the screen the dress would appear to change color. But others who were certain it was white and gold were shocked when they looked at it from a different vantage point and itseemed to switch colors. There's a scientific explanation for why #TheDress looks black and blue to some people and white and gold to the others.
The photograph, which was originally posted on the blog site What Color Is This Dress? Assuming you are referring to the now-infamous “white and gold/blue and black” dress, the colors you see are determined by the way your brain processes the colors in the dress. The dress itself is actually a blue and black pattern, but the colors can appear to be white and gold depending on how your brain interprets the colors. In the case of the blue and black dress, the brain interprets the colors differently depending on whether the dress is seen in shadow or in direct light. The blue and black dress illusion highlights the importance of lighting in color perception.
