Colors of the dress
Alan Gilchrist
First note that the alternative color pairs that people see,
white/gold or blue/black, have something in common. In each case
the two colors stand in the same relationship to each other.
They differ only in the way the relationship is anchored. The
basic rule used by the human eye to anchor colors is this: The
brightest part of a scene is automatically seen as white and this
serves as the standard (or anchor) to which darker surfaces are
compared. The question is, what is meant by "the brightest part"
in this photo, the brightest part of the dress, or the brightest
part of the entire photo? In the real world, with far more context
available, everyone would see the colors in the same way. But the
limited context makes the photo ambiguous. Some observers seem to
ignore the brighter (and yellower) background, treating the dress
itself as a separate framework. They see the lighter part of the
dress as white (because it is the brightest part of the dress).
Relative to that, the darker part is gold. Other observers take
the bright background as the standard of white. Relative to that
the lighter part of the dress is blue, and the darker part is
dark gray, perhaps black.
These two ways of seeing the dress are simulated in the two images
shown here.
http://tinyurl.com/Dress-simulation
The first image simulates the experience of people who segregate
the dress from the background. The background of the dress has
been removed and replaced by black. Here the dress appears white
and gold. The second image simulates the experience of people who
do not segment the dress from the background. Here samples of the
two colors of the dress are surrounded by the background color.
In this case, when the dress colors can only be seen in relation
to the bright background color, they appear blue and black.
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