2137: Mrs. Hennessy Returns

[Rosa]

Originally Posted by robotparker

There's simply no scenario where a light powerful enough to make a solid black piece of fabric look golden would also make an adjacent blue piece of fabric appear white. It totally flies in the face of all the practical knowledge I have of photography and studio lighting practices. As for the actual parties involved insisting that the dress is black and blue, I dunno what to tell ya. Maybe there was some sort of miscommunication somewhere that snowballed out of control and/or maybe there's some trolling aspect to it. All I can say is that there's no way a dress can melt steel beams.

hey robot. I ordered the blue and black dress online and decided to see if I could photograph it and get it to appear multi-stable. and it totally worked!!!

NOTE: these images are not for distribution. please do not forward/share.

first off, you will be pleased to learn that the black material has a funny iridescent quality to it that makes it reflect light in a funny way (so it doesn't take a crazy powerful light to get it to have that orange sheen). although, it never looks orange IRL, only when photographed.

second, the "blue/white" part of the original image wasn't actually white in terms of the pixel values (it just looked that way to you because your brain white-balanced it as such). These two things made it easier to replicate the original image than you may have suspected.

In setting up the dress photoshoot, I tried to match what I thought was going on in the original image: There is evidence of a bright light in the background. And even though some of our visual systems don't think so, we know there must have also been a bright light shining on the dress, otherwise the black trim wouldn't have looked so golden (the pixel values of the "black" part of the image are orangey/brown) and the royal blue of the dress wouldn't have come out so light blue (again, in terms of the pixel values). What makes the original image so ambiguous is that you have no unambiguous visual evidence of this second light source. Your brain has to wonder, are the golden highlights on the original image showing us a gold and white dress in shadow (where the pixels of the white part of the dress are blue because shadows introduce a blue bias), or is it a black-blue dress under a very bright yellowish light that washes those colors out and pushes the black in the gold direction? again, depending on what interpretation your brain makes, your brain white-balances it accordingly.

So for my first attempt I hung my dress up so that the window behind it could be seen with light coming in. I also placed a warm lamp behind the dress because the light from the window was rather weak. I then used a tungsten lamp (pretty warm) to directly illuminate the dress, but made sure to leave any indication of that out of frame. I posted the image on fb on a private page and got about a hundred results suggesting that people were seeing both blue-black and white-gold/bronze, as well as the pixel colors Lavendar/periwinkle-brown. It seems like these three groups are either discounting an inferred blue illuminant (shadow), a yellow/orange illuminant (direct light), or a neutral white light (discounting no-bias):



here is my white-balanced version of that image (white balancing to give either the white gold, left, or blue-black, right, version). this is akin to what the editors at WIRED did in their article (http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science...color-dress/):




for my second attempt I wanted to better match the original pixel colors (the first version was a bit too lavender). it was night-time by now, so I had to put a very bright lamp behind the dress to give the impression of backlighting. everything else was the same. again, I got over a hundred responses on fb, all very split between blue-black and white-gold (with a few periwinkle-browns) a number of people also reported some higher rates of switching than I'd previously seen:



so it can be done...

Oh, and the set-up and the dress under a neutral light for proof:




For good measure, here's one more version with two different white-balances:




NOTE: these images are not for distribution. please do not forward/share.

[Enunciated Piffle]

How come 'Moms tell your daughters to be wary the time of day when they buy a dress' isn't a thing?

Great pics. Can't believe my eyes!

[Keith]

The left one is still blue and black.

I guess I can make myself see gold cause you put yellow all over the place.

Still blue and black. I see the light is gold. And the lines in the black are gold I guess. But nah.

It's a shame the world is insane.

(That's how I would have ended your paper.)

[Rosa]

Originally Posted by Keith

The left one is still blue and black.

I guess I can make myself see gold cause you put yellow all over the place.

Still blue and black. I see the light is gold. And the lines in the black are gold I guess. But nah.

It's a shame the world is insane.

(That's how I would have ended your paper.)

even in the white balanced version (the one on the left) i sometimes have a hard time not seeing blue. but when I stare at it long enough (especially without all the other images in my periphery) it usually switches. sometimes it depends on the time of day or how tired i am. it is wild that people's percepts are so damn sticky.

we will have an opportunity to revise the manuscript. ill be sure to suggest your cogent closing.

[robotparker]

Well, I'll be damned. Rosa, you just pulled off something the entirety of the internet was unable to accomplish: convince me that the dress is actually black and blue. I admit it: I was wrong! Have a cool, crisp, delicious Sprite for your efforts:

[Rosa]

Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see | Talk Video | TED.com

[Enunciated Piffle]

"Color tells us something different. The brain didn't actually evolve to see the world the way it is. It can't. Instead the brain evolved to see the world in a way that was useful in the past."

Beau is great. He's managed to take optical illusions, (rarely taken seriously) put them in the context of evolution, and blow minds with color. Genius. Definitely one of the better talks.