What Color is the darn dress?!

It was a sound stage on Mars.

My understanding is that it's a lighting thing.

http://xkcd.com/1492/

I guess when you take a picture of the dress in one lighting setup appears one colour. That picture is posted on social media and the colour question is asked generating responses saying that it's obvious. You then provide another picture in different lighting, possibly replacing the original, and then you get a bunch more other people replying about what they obviously see. In the end what you end up with is a trending internet thing which will likely help sell a lot of dresses. Pretty effective marketing campaign I suppose given that it's now penetrated its way into a game developer website.

It's black and blue. The owner of the dress confirmed this.

I totally saw white and gold at first, though. Now I can't see it as anything other than black and blue.

It's certainly a bad picture. Someone need a new camera D: But a lot of people need a monitor calibration d:

In reality, blue and black.

Perceptively, blue and black or white and gold depending on how your brain adjusts for percieved lighting conditions.

Objectively (i.e. the colors actually shown in the photo), light blue and golden brown.

This is intriguing though. Regardless of how many videos I have seen, and scientific explanations I still am still not seeing the acclaimed royal blue and pitch black in that photo. Like you said Anthony, light blue (if not even from tint from the sky or reflected light) and a golden brown.

I took the same photo and under-exposed it and it was closer to blue an black. Then over-exposed it and it was certainly white and golden. I feel like kseh. She saw the opportunity and made two dresses.

The reason I am intrigued though is because it sounds like a cool game. "Constancy"

p.s. Cool human experiment too.

Where is the White supposed to be? At least with my Screen (and eyes) its only blue/purpleish.

I have 5 different devices (Macbook, iPad mini, iPod touch, Galaxy S4, iPad 2) I have looked at all the reports too. The keyword "Color Constancy" comes up. I am still getting white and golden/brown.

Looking at the background the exposure is sorta bad, but not too blown out. I knew right away it was an interpretation thing, but even those who claim to see blue see a very light tinted blue (not the dark royal blue), which I attributed to reflected blue light, and others attribute to overexposed blue light. In both cases it is attributed to poor lighting.

But some see both. One moment its white and gold, and the next it is black and blue.

Wondering how the overexposed black would even give golden/brown in any case. Perhaps there is a lot of brown pigment in the black dress?

According to Photoshop, it's brown and blue.

On light colored areas ...

the brown is 127 113 74 ( #7F714A )

the blue is 135 151 187 ( #8797BB )

some Whitish-blueish color with a clear goldish-brownish color. I don't know how people see black in the photo itself. Unless of course they cheat and look at the reference photo.

I feel like this whole thing is bogus though. You can use a color picker to prove it -- still photos aren't magic. Anyone can throw enough effects at something to make it look like a different color.

EDIT: On actually looking at the OP, I know what's going on. It's a totally different photo. I'm going to refrain from actually looking for the photo until I get home, to avoid monitor bias.

So for anyone who does graphics, I have a question (By the way, you all have some of the best answers anywhere.)

Q:

I was wondering why blue would be seen as a golden brown when the contrast is changed. Since there are no true blacks, the blacks must lean towards one color or another when over-exposed. Why golden? So how does exposure affect a color? Adding yellow to any dark color makes it yellow? I know we are dealing in light and not in pigment so colors behave differently.

P.S. I think my cousin and I deserve the Nobel peace prize. He has been seeing both. He didn't know why it kept changing. But it seems to be all about where you focus. Color constancy puts the top colors of the dress as white since they are more in the light, and the lower parts of the dress as blue, since they are in shadow.

I still don't get the gold and black thing though. I am guessing it is a software thing.

To me, this is a very philosophical question -- what is the color of not caring, anyway?

What is going on here? I don't even...

#internets

Still not buying it. I want to see the lighting that can turn pitch black cloth gold and a dark royal blue cloth a very pale bluish white.

Edit: I'm convinced people simply need to invest in one of these.

Why is there no option for blue and gold?

Regardless of what color the dress is in reality, the photograph is OBJECTIVELY blue and brown/gold.

SI was wondering why blue would be seen as a golden brown when the contrast is changed. Since there are no true blacks, the blacks must lean towards one color or another when over-exposed. Why golden? So how does exposure affect a color? Adding yellow to any dark color makes it yellow? I know we are dealing in light and not in pigment so colors behave differently.

The camera has used a very blue white balance, plus it's over exposed, bringing dark blue up to a very light blue. The black fabric still has white (or light source coloured) reflections on it. When whitebalancing towards blue, true white will come out yellow. White lighting in the room, reflecting off the sheer black fabric then looks yellow. Overexpose that colour again and you've got a horrible brown.

Overexpose that colour again and you've got a horrible brown.

So I wonder what toy camera they used. Sounds more like a publicity stunt even more. Haha.

Overexpose that colour again and you've got a horrible brown.

So I wonder what toy camera they used. Sounds more like a publicity stunt even more. Haha.

I heard someone on another forum say they're just instagram filters, but I can't confirm it. Search "blue and black or white and gold" on google images, and you'll see many different versions of the same dress, with varying levels of exposure.

Still not buying it. I want to see the lighting that can turn pitch black cloth gold and a dark royal blue cloth a very pale bluish white.

I was sitting next to some dark blue and black fabric, and had a phone camera, so here's the experiment done for you:
http://imgur.com/a/2Hz0R

Took literally 2 minutes to replicate, just by deliberately setting exposure high/low and whitebalance to warm/cool.